


'Tis the season for fake girlfriends

by radioactivesaltghoul



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Sharing a Bed, an abundance of tropes, and a little bit of smut for good measure, made-up Alderaanian holidays, modern AU tropes meet canonverse, shameless amounts of fluff, sorry about that, this is just plain silly, whoops some angst snuck in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-09-23 20:30:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17087222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radioactivesaltghoul/pseuds/radioactivesaltghoul
Summary: In a galaxy far, far away, where Ben Solo didn’t fall to the Dark Side and became a bounty hunter instead, he invents a fake girlfriend so that his mother will stop trying to set him up with her office assistants (and stop asking questions about his job) when he goes home for the holidays.The scavenger he just met on Jakku will do, he thinks.





	1. The scavenger will do

**Author's Note:**

> I'm hopping on the "modern AU tropes in canonverse" and the "holiday tropes" bandwagons with this one, because I can't get enough shameless holiday tropes this year ~~and I needed to write something silly to burn off steam~~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Ben Solo really, really fucked up when he told his mother that he had a girlfriend last year. 

“Ben, it’s the Feast of Flowers. You have to bring her home to meet us. Your father and I are very interested in meeting the only partner you’ve ever mentioned having.”

He sighed. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “She’s pretty busy these days.”

“Speaking of,” Leia said casually, “how’s work going for you? What is it you do these days, anyway?" 

 _Kriff._ His job was the whole reason he’d made up the fake girlfriend in the first place. He didn’t think that his mother, a senator in the New Republic, and his uncle, a legendary Jedi, would approve of his choice of professions as a bounty hunter. But Ben was good at it, and it paid well. Being a Force-sensitive who was trained by Luke Skywalker had its perks, even though he highly doubted that this was what Luke wanted him to use his skills for. 

To his uncle’s eternal disappointment, Ben hadn’t wanted to stay on and teach the padawans in the New Jedi Order. And to his mother’s eternal disappointment, he hadn’t wanted to follow her into politics, either. So when he picked up bounty hunting, he’d been vague every time his mother started asking questions about what he was doing for work. When she’d started growing suspicious, he knew he needed to find a way to distract her

“Work has been slow lately because I’ve been spending a lot of time with my new girlfriend,” he’d blurted out in a panic. About half a second after the words were out of his mouth, he’d realized that he’d probably made things even worse for himself. What did people do with new girlfriends, anyway? Ben wasn’t exactly an expert on relationships. Which was a nice way of saying “he never dated, ever, and had little to no interest in trying it out.” Unlike the Jedi of the Old Republic, Luke had never discouraged his students from developing attachments to other people. In fact, he encouraged it, claiming that healthy relationships had the potential to encourage people to stick to the Light Side. When Ben was nineteen, Luke confessed that part of his reasoning was that Anakin having to hide his relationship with Padme from the Jedi masters probably played into his fall to the Dark Side and his transformation into Darth Vader.

That had been a heavy, awkward conversation that ended in “Just something to keep in mind if you ever decide to continue the Skywalker bloodline.” _No thank you._

“I’m between jobs right now,” he said to his mother. Which was yet another mistake, because Leia immediately latched on to the implication that Ben had a lot of free time at the moment. 

“That’s perfect!” she said. “You have time to come home for the Feast of Flowers, then. And bring your girlfriend. I want to meet her.” Before Ben could respond, she said, “Your father wants to talk to you” and disappeared from the hologram. A moment later, Han popped into the view. 

“If you’re looking for work,” Han said, “I might know someone who knows someone.”

 _This again._ “I told you, I don’t want to work for Lando,” Ben said. “Bespin sounds dull as hell.”

Han paused and looked at something off-screen. A moment later, he said quietly, “Your mother just left the room. Listen, just come home for the holidays and bring your girlfriend. Maybe she’ll finally stop bugging me to bug you about it.” 

Typical Han, looking out for himself instead of someone else. “I—” Ben started to say, but Han cut him off.

“You don’t want her to try setting you up with her senatorial assistants again, do you?”

Ben shuddered. Not that Korr, Greer, and Joph were bad people, he just had zero attraction to any of them. And anyway, if they found out what he actually did for work, they might run back to Hosnian Prime and tell Leia. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll come home for the holidays and bring my girlfriend.” 

Han grinned. “Knew that would get you,” he said.

Ben resisted the urge to roll his eyes and say _Yeah, whatever_ like a teenager. “I have to go now,” he said instead. “You’re breaking up. The signal out here isn’t great.” That actually wasn’t a lie for once; he was nearing a remote planet called Jakku, which was where his next target was located.

“Sure it is,” Han said with a wink. “See you soon, kid.”

As soon as the transmission ended, Ben put his face in his hands and groaned. “What the kriff am I doing?” he asked the empty ship around him. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t respond, and rather than fall into a panic spiral, he turned his attention to the job at hand.

“Unkar Plutt,” he muttered as he opened the transmission with the job details in it. “Crolute. Runs Niima Outpost. Wanted dead, not kidnapped and returned to sender.” He didn’t know why someone wanted Unkar Plutt dead, but it didn’t matter. His job wasn’t to know why his targets were being targeted. It was to kidnap them or kill them.

Ben had traveled to a number of systems, but he’d never been to Jakku before. As he neared Niima Outpost, he understood why: there was nothing there. Well, not _nothing._ But almost nothing. The lack of good hiding places was going to make his job more difficult if anyone had enough loyalty to Plutt to try to go after his killer.

He landed and put on a mask before exiting the ship. He’d learned the hard way that his skin would fry up in a second on desert planets like this. And anyway, the fewer people who knew what he looked like, the better. A few hours later, Ben was wrestling with his anxiety about the fake girlfriend thing and his boredom at being on Jakku. He’d found Plutt almost as soon as he landed (the line of scavengers waiting to trade scrap metal for potions was depressingly long) but he hadn’t wanted to draw attention to himself, so he hung around at the closest thing that passed for a bar, nursing a pint of the shittest liquor he’d had in a long time.

Taking Plutt down was going to be easy. There was little to no security here. Not that it was really needed, considering how depressing this entire planet was. The fake girlfriend thing, though…

A thought occurred to him. Maybe he could hire someone to be his fake girlfriend for a couple of days. Not a sex worker— _that_ was not the reason he needed a fake girlfriend, not even a little bit—and anyway, his parents would probably see through the act right away if he brought along a professional. No, he had to find someone as awkward as he was if he wanted to make this believable. And there was no way that some of these scavengers would say no to credits (or a ride off this rock), right? He just had to find the right person. Female, preferably human and close in age to him. Like...her, that girl with the three buns who was trying to clean some of the grit out of whatever scraps she’d managed to dig up that day. 

 _Right-o. Let’s get this over with._ Putting the remains of his shitty beer down on the counter, Ben braced himself for the weirdest proposition he’d ever make. _How do I do this without sounding like a huge asshole?_ he wondered. _Ah well. Nothing lost, nothing gained. If she says no, it’s not like you’re ever coming back to this dustball once the Plutt job is done._

“Hi,” he said as he sat down at the table next to her, trying as hard as he could to look cool and casual.

She didn’t even look up from the scrap she was cleaning. “Can I help you?”

“Do you have any plans in the next few days?” He cringed internally as he realized that he probably should have eased into the question more.

She frowned. “Plans? I live on Jakku. The only plans I have are ‘scavenging’ and ‘not dying alone in the desert.’”

“You wanna go off-world for a few days?” 

That question caught her attention. She looked up, eyes wide. Ben had a brief moment of thinking _Wow, I didn’t know that hazel eyes could be so pretty_ before she said “Off-world? Seriously? Is this a joke?”

“Not a joke,” Ben said, trying to ignore the confusing thoughts about her eyes. “I’ll give you a ride anywhere you want to go afterwards. I can pay you.”

“I’m not a sex worker.”

“No, I didn’t mean to imply—this is not a sex thing, I promise,” he said quickly. “It’s just, it’s a long story, and I need someone to pretend to be my girlfriend when I go visit my parents in the Hosnian system for a few days so that my mom will—” He stopped when he saw the expression she was giving him. He could almost hear the words _Holy shit, this guy is nuts_ coming from her. When he tried to reach out in the Force to get a better idea of her reaction, he felt some sort of mental block. _Interesting. Is she Force-sensitive?_ Bringing home a Force-sensitive fake girlfriend was either the best idea he’d ever had, or the worst. It was hard to know how Luke would take it.

“You’re serious,” she said after the silence had started to become awkward. “You—can you take your mask off? I can’t keep having this conversation if I can’t see your face.” He paused, then shrugged before sliding the mask off. He preferred the anonymity of it, but considering what he was asking, he figured the least he could do was show her his face. He didn’t know how to interpret the microexpressions that flew across her face as her eyes scanned him, but she didn’t say anything about it. Instead, she picked up right where she left off with “You want to pay me to be your fake girlfriend in the _Hosnian system_ for a few days?”

As a result of his complete disinterest in ever dating or “continuing the Skywalker bloodline,” as Luke put it, Ben had never really given a thought to his physical attractiveness. He knew that plenty of beings in the galaxy got hung up on that sort of thing, but there were too many different beauty standards to pay attention to. Maybe...maybe this scavenger’s reluctance to accepting his offer was because he didn’t fit her standards of beauty.

That thought made his heart hurt unexpectedly.

“Why not?” he said. “You said yourself that the only thing you’re doing here is scavenging and trying not to die. Why not take a vacation from that? Or hell, get the kriff off of this rock for good?” Belatedly, he realized that he was insulting her homeworld, and it was possible that she may take offense to that.

She bit her lip, looking torn. “Will you bring me back here afterwards?” she said.

 _Out of all of the planets, all of the systems in the galaxy, and she wants to come back_ here _?_ Ben thought. “If you want, yes,” he said.

“I want payment in portions rather than credits,” she said. 

Ben couldn’t keep a hopeful smile from his face. “Does that mean you’re in?”

“Five days, then you bring me back here and pay me in my weight in portions.” She gave him a challenging look, like she was expecting to have to barter more for it.

Lucky for her, her weight in portions was well within Ben’s budget. “We have a deal, then,” he said, holding out his hand. “My name is Ben, by the way.”

“Rey,” she said, looking at his hand like she wasn’t really sure what to do about it. Maybe they didn’t do handshakes on Jakku. “Where’s your ship? The sooner we leave, the sooner I can get back here and wait for—” She cut herself off, like she didn’t want to say something to him. Which was fine. Whatever business she had on Jakku, it didn’t concern Ben. 

Actually, it worked out well that she wanted to come back here, because he’d have to finish the Plutt job after the holidays. He wasn’t sure how much loyalty Rey had to Unkar Plutt, but he didn’t want to push his luck by trying to sneak off to kill him right now. Not when he was so close to finally getting his mother to lay off on the whole girlfriend thing.

“A bit eager, aren’t you?” he said, standing up. “Come on. I’ll tell you the whole story on the way to Hosnian Prime.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Alderaanian Feast of Flowers is not canon. If it sounds familiar, I've referenced it in a fic before.


	2. Let’s lay out some ground rules

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone needs to be on the same page in this fake relationship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to get this all up in the next couple of weeks because 'tis the season for holiday tropes and I don't want this to blow up in scope ~~unlike my other WIP~~. Unbeta'd, as usual.

Accepting a strange offworlder’s request to be his fake girlfriend (whatever the hell _that_ meant) was either going to be the best decision of Rey’s life, or the worst. 

She’d watched a couple of holofilms about romance before. Not often—she usually spent her free time doing something more useful, like training or practicing on her flight simulator—but she had watched them, and she did have a vague idea of what being a girlfriend entailed. Romance, kissing, and sex seemed to be the three key parts of it. They’d already agreed that sex wasn’t included in this, but the romance and the kissing…

Rey didn’t know a damn thing about romance. Nor did she know much about kissing, having never partaken in the act (or had sex, for that matter.) There just weren’t a lot of viable options on Jakku.

“Wait,” she said as he turned to head off in the direction of his ship. “Can I at least lock up my own stuff before we leave?” No sense in leaving things unguarded for other scavengers to steal.

He paused, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that she might have things worth locking up. “Sure,” he said. “Lead the way.”

“Can you follow me on your ship?” she said. She didn’t want to have to come back to Niima Outpost again, and she didn’t want anyone to question why she was getting on an offworlder’s ship.

He nodded, and not long after that, they were speeding off in the direction of Rey’s AT-AT. She couldn’t stop wondering about the same three questions:

_Why does this guy need a fake girlfriend?_

_Why me?_

_What the_ kriff _am I getting myself into?_

She slowed as she approached her AT-AT and a moment later, she heard the sounds of the ship landing and the hatch opening. “What the—you live in an _AT-AT_?” Ben asked. He sounded like he was half a second from bursting into laughter.

Rey felt her face heat up. “It’s a perfectly respectable place to live,” she snapped. “Nobody bothers me out here, and I have all the space I need.”

Ben’s eyebrows rose. Rey turned away before she could snap at him again. “Let’s just get this over with,” she grumbled. 

To her surprise, Ben followed her into the AT-AT, cursing as he hit his head on something. She smirked. _He’s too damn tall,_ she thought. Not that was a _bad_ thing, necessarily. He was...yeah. Not like anyone on Jakku. Too attractive to be found wandering around a planet like that, to be honest. Rey had never given much thought to the things she found attractive in other beings, but she found that she liked that he was so tall. And his face was a pleasing combination of features. Great hair. A pair of pretty eyes. Very kissable-looking lips. 

Yeah, not bad. Not bad at all. Kissing him, if their fake relationship needed that, would probably be very pleasant.

And she found that she wanted their fake relationship to need that. 

It didn’t take long for Rey to gather the things she’d need to bring with her (well okay, just her staff and the clothes she was wearing) and lock up the rest, floating some of her more precious things into the high-up hiding places that most scavengers on Jakku wouldn’t think to look. Ben didn’t say anything while she was doing so, but something caught his eye. “What are all those marks?” he said, staring at the wall of scratches. (She’d have to remember to add the few days she was away when she got back. But did those days count, if she was spending them off-world?) 

“None of your business,” Rey said, not wanting to explain them to a stranger. “Let’s go.”

She couldn’t keep herself from gawking as they entered the ship. “It’s not much,” Ben said, sounding a little apologetic, “but she’s all mine.”

“This is amazing,” she said, inspecting the controls in the cockpit. “Pieces of this would bring in so many portions at Niima Outpost.”

“You can’t take apart my ship,” he said as he sat down to prepare the ship for take-off. “I’m making that one of our conditions for this arrangement.”

If he was going to pay her in enough portions to keep her fed for years, that was something she could agree to. “Okay,” she said. “What else?”

“Let’s get going. We can discuss it on our way to Hosnian Prime. Although…” he said, turning to look her up and down. “I think we need to make a stop first.”

Rey frowned. “That wasn’t part of the arrangement,” she said.

“You can’t show up to the Feast of Flowers in the rags you’re wearing now. Sit down. We’re about to take off, and the transition from Jakku’s gravity into the artificial gravity of the ship might be a bit difficult for you.”

She huffed, but she slid into the copilot’s chair without a word, watching him input coordinates in silence. Then, without warning, they took off with a lurch that made Rey feel like she was being sucked into the floor of the ship. But as strange as that sensation was, the view from the windows was even stranger.  She watched her AT-AT get smaller and smaller until she couldn’t see it anymore. She knew that her eyes were as wide as saucers, but she couldn’t find it in her to care what Ben thought of her at the moment.

From above, Jakku looked like a tan ball. There was another lurch, which Rey assumed was the ship’s artificial gravity kicking in. _This is it, then,_ she thought. _I’m really leaving Jakku._

“Have you ever been off-world before?” Ben asked. Unlike the tone of his previous comments, this sounded almost...curious. As if he actually cared about the answer.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been on Jakku as far back as I remember. Maybe I wasn’t born there.”

“You don’t know where you’re from?” he said. “But surely your parents—”

“You said something about a stop?” Rey asked before he could finish that statement.

He paused, giving her a look that she couldn’t decipher. “We’re going to Chandrila,” he said. “You can’t wear the clothes you’re wearing now.”

“What’s wrong with my clothing?” It was perfectly acceptable on Jakku. Nice, even. Having to barter for the boots had been a pain in the ass, but Rey was proud of the fact that everything she owned, she’d earned on her own.

“For starters, the climate on Hosnian Prime is totally different from the climate on Jakku,” Ben said. “And my family will see through this act in a moment if you show up looking like that.”

She frowned. “I don’t have any money,” she said. “Portions are the main currency on Jakku, not credits.”

“Consider it part of your fee.”

“Do I get any say in what I wear?” She’d seen a holofilm once about a woman who wore dresses so big and elaborate that she was probably smuggling parts in the folds of the skirts. It looked annoying and uncomfortable to walk in, and Rey had no interest in experiencing that for herself.

He shrugged. “It’s your body,” he said. “As long as it’s something that my family will consider socially acceptable, I don’t really care.”

“Okay then, so that’s three ground rules,” said Rey.

“Three?”

She held up her hand and counted on her fingers. “Number one, this isn’t a sex thing. I’m not a sex worker.” She hadn’t taken offense when he’d initially asked her to be his fake girlfriend. Mostly, she’d been confused, because she sure as hell didn’t dress like the other sex workers on Jakku.

“Obviously,” he said. Was that a faint blush she detected on his cheeks? _Nah, must be the lighting in here._ After spending so much time crawling through the guts of downed Star Destroyers, it was weird being inside of a ship that wasn’t a wreck leftover from a galactic war. She wasn’t used to all of the artificial light.

“Number two,”” she said, holding up a second finger. “No scavenging your ship. I promise that your ship is safe from me, as long as I get my payment when this is all over with.”

“Agreed.”

“Number three. I wear something that you consider ‘socially acceptable,’ but I still get to make those choices. You can’t dress me up like a toy.”

He nodded. “Three rules,” he said. “What else?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “What do you usually do with the girlfriends you bring to—why exactly do you need a fake girlfriend in the first place? What’s so special about the next few days?”

“It’s the Alderaanian Feast of Flowers,” he said.

“Alderaanian? But—” Rey hadn’t had the most comprehensive education, but even she knew that Alderaan had been destroyed during the same civil war responsible for the way she made her living.

“I know,” he said. “My mom’s from Alderaan. She wasn’t on the planet when...you know,” he said. “Obviously, since I’m here. But she’s always made this big thing about celebrating Alderaanian holidays and keeping those traditions alive, so she throws a huge party every year for the Feast of Flowers. Invites the entire Alderaanian diaspora. I managed to get out of going the last few years, but I, uh, talked myself into a corner this year.”

“So why do you need a fake girlfriend?”

He was definitely blushing now. Rey could see it on his cheeks and the tips of his ears. “I lied and said I had a girlfriend a year ago because I—well, let’s just say she was asking too many questions about my job and I had to find a way to distract her. Plus, every time I go home, she tries to set me up with her assistants.”

“Wow.” _Don’t laugh at him,_ she told herself. “So you’ve been lying to your mother for the past year and instead of telling her the truth, you’re paying me to help dig you even deeper into the lie?”

“Well when you put it like that…” he said. “Look, it won’t be that bad. Just a couple of days of parties, small talk, and food, and then we’ll be out of there and you’ll never have to think about it again.”

“Food? Real food? Not portions?” That was the only part of that last sentence that had actually caught her attention. _Screw the other stuff. Where’s the food?!_

One side of his mouth quirked up in a half smile that was almost as alluring as the thought of real food. “You can have all of the food you want,” he said. “That’s one of the traditions of the Feast of Flowers. You feast.”

Rey was pretty sure it was a joke, but food was absolutely _not_ a joking matter to her. “What does it cost?” she asked, already trying to mentally catalog her skills. Maybe they had a ship that needed repairing? A droid? She was handy with things like that.

“Cost? Rey, I’m paying _you_. The food is included in the fee.”

“But—” She didn’t think he understood just how integral portions were to the economy on Jakku.

“Rey,” he said, turning to place his hands on her shoulders. Which should have made her tense up even more, considering how much time she spent trying to avoid other people, but his hands were big and warm and it was cold in space and somehow, it helped her calm down a little bit. “Relax. Just enjoy it. And, you know, pretend that we’ve been dating for a year, or whatever.”

“Right,” she said slowly. Fake girlfriend. Yeah. That was the whole reason she was here. Not because he wanted to feed her. “So we’ve been dating for a year. How did we meet?”

“It’s going to be easier to remember if we stick as close to the truth as possible,” he said, letting his hands slide off of her shoulders. Rey immediately missed the warmth of his hands, which was definitely because it was so cold and _not_ because she liked having him in her space, or anything. “We met on Jakku, because I had a job there.”

“What is it that you do for work, anyway?” she asked. “As your fake girlfriend, that’s probably something I should know about you.”

“Oh, just odd jobs here and there,” he said. “My parents don’t know much about my work, and I’d prefer to keep it that way. If they ask you questions about my job, just make something up.”

_Well that’s sketchy._ But whatever, he said she could have as much food as she wanted, so she could lie about his job that was probably something illegal. Smuggling or bounty hunting, probably. There wasn’t a lot of respectable work that brought people through Niima Outpost. “Fine, I can do that.”

There was an awkward silence as they both tried to figure out what to discuss next. She wanted to ask about kissing, because that was a topic she was _very_ curious in, but she didn’t quite have the courage to approach that particular topic yet. And anyway, maybe Alderaanian dating norms weren’t like what she’d seen in holofilms. “So what do you usually do when you bring a partner to the Feast of Flowers?” she asked, hoping that he would bring up the topic on his own.

“I...I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve, uh, never brought a partner home to meet my parents before.”

“Well,” she said, grinning at him. “I’ve never been hired to be someone’s fake girlfriend before, so I guess we’re both flying blind, here.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...yeah I'm taking a few liberties with Rey and the Force. Shhh, just go with it.


	3. The obligatory makeover scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Rey go shopping on Chandrila.

Nothing could have prepared Ben for the sight of Rey’s face as they landed in Hanna City. In retrospect, he probably should have figured that she would be overwhelmed by anything other than the barren wasteland of Jakku. But he’d be lying if he said that he didn’t love watching the way she lit up at every little new thing: the birds flying overhead, the smells of street food frying, the sounds of people talking and laughing around them. “There’s so much color” were the first words out of her mouth as they prepared to land in the Hanna City spaceport, uttered in an awed whisper. Something about her expression and her excitement about the things that Ben considered totally mundane made his heart skip a beat. He found that he wanted to elicit that reaction from her again.

And speaking of things he wanted to elicit from her… Why had it been so difficult to bring up the types of public displays of affection that people in relationships normally did? That was _definitely_ a topic that they needed to discuss before they landed on Hosnian Prime. Even though they’d set some rules for their arrangement, neither of them had broached that subject before they’d gone to sleep for the rest of the trip to Chandrila. He had no idea what she thought a relationship involved. Jakku didn’t really seem like the sort of place that had a lot of opportunities for dating. Not that Ben was an expert, but he was pretty sure that touching and kissing were involved. During that conversation, he’d realized that kissing Rey didn’t seem like it would be so bad. Even through all of the dirt and rags that made up the standard Jakku wardrobe, she was pretty. _Really_ pretty.

He couldn’t wait to see what she looked like after she’d had a shower and put on nicer clothing.

“We should think of this as practice,” Ben said as they walked through the streets of Hanna City.

“Practice?” She was still distracted by all of the sights and sounds around her, but at the sound of his voice, she turned back to look at him.

“You know,” he said. “For the fake relationship we’re going to show to my family.” He tried to make the words sound as casual as he could, but he was pretty sure she could hear the tremor in his voice. _This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,_ he thought for the thousandth time. 

She nodded. “That’s a good idea,” she said. “So what do we do? Hold hands?” Upon seeing his questioning expression, she said, “I’ve seen holofilms before. We’re not _that_ uncivilized on Jakku.”

“That’s a good place to start,” he said, holding out his hand.

She laced her fingers through his and smiled at him. Which...wow. Why did the simple action of taking her hand make his heart speed up? Her skin was rough with callouses from years of scavenging in the desert, but her hands were warm. He liked the way that she gripped him firmly, like she actually wanted this small physical contact as well. “Where to?” she asked.

“I have a friend who owns a shop here,” he said. “I’ve already commed him. It’s not much further.”

She was still gawking at the city around them when they arrived at Mitaka’s shop. Ben couldn’t find it in him to ask her to stop. “We’re here,” he said, nodding at the store window. “Come on.”

He wasn’t surprised that her gawking didn’t stop when they entered the shop. If anything, it was even more pronounced. “I’ve never seen this much clothing in one place in my entire life,” she whispered to Ben.

“Pick out anything you want,” he whispered. “And take as much as you want. It’s all included in your fee, remember?”

Before she could respond, Mitaka greeted them, walking out from behind the counter. “Ben Solo!” he called. “And...Ben Solo’s girlfriend?”

“This is Rey,” Ben said, nodding at her. Logically, he knew that he’d have to let go of her hand eventually, but he didn’t want to. Not yet, anyway. “Rey, meet Mitaka. He’ll help you find something to wear to the Feast of Flowers.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Rey,” Mitaka said, bowing to her. Ben rolled his eyes. The tailor was always so dramatic.

Rey glanced at Ben, as if waiting for a cue from him. He shrugged, not sure what reaction she expected of him. “It’s...nice to meet you too,” she said stiffly.

“Come on,” Mitaka said, looking her up and down. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Solo, you sit down. Or do your own shopping. Whatever keeps you out of the way. I think your girlfriend’s makeover should be something of a surprise, don’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, he walked off, waving to Rey to follow him. With one last glance at Ben, she walked off behind Mitaka, listening as he started listing off the items of clothing that she should find.

 

* * *

 

Ben hadn’t known how much time he should have expected Rey’s makeover to take, but three hours later, he was still sitting behind Mitaka’s counter, flipping through a holomagazine. He could hear Mitaka’s and Rey’s voices as they walked through the store, picking out clothing, but he wasn’t paying too much attention to them. The tailor may have had an annoying flair for the dramatic, but Ben liked the idea of being surprised by Rey’s clothing choices. It was the most entertainment he’d had in ages.

“Where did you find her?” Mitaka asked Ben as Rey was busy trying on clothes. “She seems like she’s never gone shopping before.”

“She’s from Jakku, so probably not,” Ben said.

“How the kriff did you find a girlfriend on _Jakku_?” 

Ben shrugged. “Just by chance. I had a job there. It was love at first sight.” _It was_ something _at first sight, that’s for sure_.

Mitaka laughed. “That’s the last phrase I ever thought I’d hear you use.” 

“Yeah, well,” Ben said, not sure how to respond to that. Hopefully his family wouldn’t make any similar comments. He didn’t want to draw any attention to the fact that this wasn’t something he did, _ever_.

Fortunately, he was saved from having to find a way to change the subject as Rey wandered out from the dressing rooms in the back, carrying a pile of clothing. “I think I’m done,” she said, placing the pile on the counter. She was still wearing her old clothes from Jakku, leaving Ben to wonder what kind of clothing she’d picked out.

“Fantastic. I’ll ring you up, then. The shoes as well?” Mitaka said, starting to go through the pile.

“Anything she wants,” Ben said. “It’s all on me.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“We’ll call it a holiday gift,” he said, walking over to stand next to her. That was a normal relationship thing, right? As was taking her hand in his, which was Ben’s excuse for simply wanting that small physical contact. _I’m starting to understand the phrase ‘touch-starved,’_ he thought as he gave her hand a quick squeeze.

Rey surprised him by one-upping him, leaning in to brush a quick kiss on his cheek. “Thank you,” she murmured.

Ben felt his face and ears go so red that he probably looked like he’d spent all day under the sun on Jakku. “You’re welcome,” he muttered gruffly, trying not to let on that his brain was suddenly screaming _yes, that, more of that, please_. “Do you like the clothes?” he added before he could do something stupid, like wrap his arms around her and kiss her on the lips as he’d seen people do in those stupid holofilms that Luke always pretended he didn’t like.

Rey nodded, but she didn’t say anything before Mitaka said loudly, “It’s like a kriffing fairy tale here.” Ben had almost forgotten that he was even in the room. “You two are sickeningly sweet,” Mitaka added, handing Ben and Rey each a bag of clothing. “Nice to meet you Rey. Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.” He directed the last statement at Ben, like he was trying to ask a question without actually stating it.

“Yeah, maybe,” she said without meeting Ben’s eyes.

“Come on,” Ben said, trying to ignore the strange pang that echoed through his chest at Rey’s words. “We don’t want to be late.”

They walked back to his ship in silence. Rey was more subdued than she had been on the walk to the shop. Ben figured that she’d just gotten used to being in a city.

Neither of them said anything until they were already in hyperspace on their way to Hosnian Prime, and then the only thing they talked about was how to use the small sonic shower on Ben’s ship. “You should probably get cleaned up a bit before we reach Hosnian Prime,” he said. He felt the need to add, “Not that you look bad! You actually look really good, considering—” _Kriff. I’m putting my foot in my mouth again_. Why was he so good at accidentally insulting her? More importantly: why did he care? Ben never cared about that sort of thing. If he insulted someone, fine. If they started a fight with him over it, he’d win. And he never said no to a good fight. It was his favorite way to burn off excess energy and stress. 

“Considering I came from Jakku,” she added flatly. “It’s fine. I get it. I won’t be long.” She took the bags of clothing into the small fresher with her, leaving Ben alone.

“Kriff,” he muttered before realizing that it was probably pretty creepy to hang out outside of the fresher while she was in there. He dragged himself back into his room to panic about the whole situation in peace and when he wandered back out into the main cabin of the ship, Rey was sitting in the copilot’s chair, tying her hair back up into the three buns she’d been wearing before. He wondered if that sort of hairstyle was popular on Jakku, or if she just liked wearing it like that.

“I’m sorry I insulted you earlier,” he said, the apology feeling awkward on his tongue. What was he doing now? He _never_ apologized. Usually, if he insulted someone, he was just being honest. And he refused to apologize for being honest. (That was one of Luke’s teachings that he’d never disagreed with.)

“It’s fine,” she said without turning to face him. “I’ve never taken a sonic shower. It was an interesting experience to have.”

_I’m sure it was,_ he thought. She’d probably had that same awed expression on her face as she’d adjusted the dials on the shower and stripped down, taking each layer of clothing off and... _Oh kriff I’m thinking about her naked now._

Time to shut that train of thought down, _immediately._ Of all the people in the galaxy he wanted to see naked, and it was the scavenger he was paying to be his fake girlfriend. Emphasis on  _fake_.

He sat down in the captain’s chair and swung it around so that he was facing her. “You look nice,” he said, trying to smooth over the damage he’d done earlier. 

It wasn’t a lie. She’d chosen clothing that was similar to what she’d been wearing earlier: brown leggings tucked into boots, a light tan sleeveless tunic that wrapped around her body, a sleeveless tan vest on top of that, and another set of arm wraps made of the same fabric as the vest. When she turned in her chair to face him, he noticed that she’d also looped a brown belt across her body. He wondered if she was planning on “scavenging” small pieces of the ship to store in the little pocket attached to the belt, then decided that it wasn’t worth worrying about. He trusted her when she’d said that she wouldn’t scavenge any parts of his ship.

“So tell me about your family,” she said. “All you’ve told me is that your mother is from Alderaan, but she now lives on Hosnian Prime. Who else is there?” 

“My mother lives on Hosnian Prime because she’s a senator in the New Republic,” he said. “My father is…” _How do I explain Han’s job history?_ he wondered. “Officially, he’s a retired starship racer who now trains other pilots.”

Something must have clicked for Rey, because her eyes were suddenly wide open. “Wait. Your last name is Solo. Your dad is _Han Solo_?”

Ben sighed. “Yeah, Han is my father. The Rebellion general-turned-racer.”

Rey shook her head. “No, Han Solo the smuggler.” 

_Han will love hearing that,_ he thought. “That too,” he said, his lips quirking up into a half smile. “Don’t mention that to my mother, though.”

“I can’t believe Han Solo’s son is paying me to be his fake girlfriend,” Rey said in a hushed tone. “This is the most surreal thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“He’s not much of a father,” he grumbled, his face falling into a scowl. “He and my mother have always been too busy with their jobs to have time for anything else, including me. They handed me off to my uncle to train at his new Jedi academy as soon as Luke opened it up.”

If Rey’s eyes were wide when he’d brought up Han, that was nothing to the expression she was wearing now. “I thought the Jedi were just a myth,” she said.

He shook his head. “Not a myth.”

“Wait. Your uncle Luke opened a Jedi academy. Luke _Skywalker_? I thought he was a myth, too. And the Force.”

_She thinks the Force is a myth? That doesn’t make any sense._ “How can you think the Force is a myth?” he said incredulously. “You’re Force-sensitive. I watched you use the Force to move your things around in your AT-AT.”

“Wait, hold on, _what?_ ” Ben had never seen someone look like their mind was blown before (aside from some of his more, uh, _aggressive_ interrogations). “I’m not Force-sensitive. That’s a not a real thing.”

He knew his expression was just as flabbergasted as hers. “What did you think you were doing when you used the Force to move things around?” he asked.

She shook her head. “That’s just something I’ve always been able to do,” she said. “I figured it out years ago. It helped me scavenge better once I got too big to fit into the small cracks and compartments in Star Destroyers. I thought everyone could do that.”

Ben shook his head. “No, most people don’t have that ability. Being Force-sensitive is a rare trait, and most Force-sensitives never get the training to learn how to use the Force. That’s why Luke opened the academy. Kriff, I can’t believe you figured out how to do _that_ but never realized you were Force-sensitive. Who were your parents? Surely one of them must have known.”

“I…” For a moment, he thought that she was still too stunned to realize he’d asked her a question. “If they knew, they never told me. Or maybe they did and I forgot. They left a long time ago, but they’re coming back for me one day. That’s why I have to go back to Jakku after this.”

Something about that statement felt wrong to Ben, but he wasn’t sure what. He knew all about parental abandonment, though. “How long have you been waiting?” he asked gently.

“A long time,” she said. “That’s what all the marks are. One scratch for every day I wait.” 

It took him a moment to realize what she was referring to. And then... _There were so many scratches,_ he thought. _Does she realize that they’re probably never coming back for her?_ Judging by the way hope shone in her eyes, probably not.

“But back to the Force,” she said. “I take back what I said earlier. _This_ is the most surreal thing that’s ever happened to me." 

“You need a teacher,” he said. “I can show you the ways of the Force.” She opened her mouth, and then closed it without saying anything. “Just think about it,” he said softly. “You don’t have to answer now.”

She nodded, turning back to watch the streaks of hyperspace light fly past the windows. They continued to travel in silence, both reeling from the conversation.

It wasn’t until the ship’s nav system alerted them that they were almost there that either of them spoke again. “Are you ready for this?” he asked as they prepared to enter Hosnian Prime’s atmosphere.

She barked out a sharp laugh. “Are you?”

_No._ “Yes.”

“Yeah, me either,” she said.

“Am I that transparent?”

“Darling,” she said, exaggerating the term of endearment to an almost comical degree. “It’s because I, your girlfriend of one year, knows you like you know yourself at this point.”

Oh. Kriff. He _really_ liked the way that sounded, even if it was all a lie. _I’m in trouble._

 


	4. ...and there’s only one bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey’s mind continues to be blown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You knew this trope was coming.

Rey was 98% sure that this whole trip was a hallucination brought on by taking a hard hit to the head falling off of a ledge in the belly of a downed Star Destroyer. Or maybe it wasn't a hallucination, and this was the universe’s way of throwing twenty years’ worth of adventure at her at once.

_I can do this, I can do this,_ she chanted to herself as they landed on Hosnian Prime. _Just forget about that entire conversation until I have some free time to have a breakdown about it at some unspecified point in the future._ If there was one thing Rey was good at besides scavenging, it was compartmentalizing.

“Remember: you’re my girlfriend of one year. We met on Jakku. We both do odd jobs. Feel free to eat as much food as you want,” Ben whispered to her as they stood hand-in-hand, waiting for someone to answer the door. “I apologize in advance for any invasive questions they may ask." 

“What do you—” she whispered as the door slid open with a _whoosh_.

A golden protocol droid stood on the other side of it. Ben groaned. “Look who it is!” the droid said. “Young Master Ben, and…” it said, looking at Rey. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I am C-3PO, human cyborg relations. It’s so good to have you both here for the holiday.” 

“I’m Rey,” she said. Was she supposed to hold out her hand so that the droid could shake it, or was that just a human thing? 

“I will tell the princess immediately,” the droid said, tottering off. _Okay. No hand shaking with droid. Got it._

“Come on,” Ben murmured as he stepped through the doorway. “The sooner we start, the sooner we can leave.”

She let him lead her into the building. There was something nice about holding his hand. Maybe it was because she’d always felt so disconnected from everything and it was a simple, solid way to feel connected to someone, even if it wasn’t real. Which was something she needed to remember. _It isn’t real_. She’d almost forgotten on Chandrila, when she’d kissed him in the clothing shop. The way he’d blushed would have been cute if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was probably angry that she’d done that without his permission. She’d spent the walk back to the ship reminding herself that it was fake, too busy trying to drill the phrase into her brain to pay attention to everything around them. Which was a shame, because she wasn’t sure if she’d ever go back to Hanna City, and it seemed like a nice place. 

Not as nice as Republic City, though. They’d arrived not long after the sun had set, the city lit up in a way that Rey had only seen in holos. She couldn’t tell if the lights strung over the buildings and trees were always there, or if they were just a holiday decoration. Either way, the effect was captivating. She hoped that there would be time just to sit and take everything in. 

After all of the feasting, of course.

During the discussion about Ben’s family, they’d never actually discussed what they were like, aside from “my parents were too busy with their jobs to care about me.” That was something Rey could almost understand. After all, her parents probably left her with Plutt because they had to go find work, too. Then, after they saved up enough money, they’d come back for her and they’d all live happily together. (Preferably somewhere far, far away from Jakku.)

“Ben’s here!” someone shouted. A moment later, a short woman with hair in elaborate braids turned a corner into the entryway where Rey and Ben were waiting. “Finally, you’re home for the holidays,” she said as she pulled him in for a hug.

“Mom, please—” he said, wrapping one arm around her awkwardly. The other was still holding on Rey’s hand, like he was afraid to let her go. Either that, or he thought it was the best way to signal that Rey was the mysterious girlfriend that he’d told his parents about. _Probably the latter_ , Rey thought as Leia let Ben go. 

“And you must be Ben’s girlfriend,” she said, turning to Rey. “He’s been so secretive about you. It’s so nice of you to join us for the Feast of Flowers.” Without warning, she pulled Rey in for a hug.

Rey had no frame of reference for what it was like to be embraced by a parent. But if this was what it was like, then it was nice, even if it felt a little strange. “It’s nice to meet you too,” she said to Leia. “I’m Rey.” She didn’t let go of Ben’s hand, figuring that she’d follow his lead on this. After all, he was the one paying her. It was probably best to let him dictate the terms of their fake relationship now that they were at his parents’ house.

“Come,” Leia said, stepping back. “Han and Chewie went out to run a couple of last-minute errands, but Luke’s here already. It’s just the family for dinner tonight. The big party is tomorrow. I’ve got the top floor and balcony of the Prosperity Tower building reserved so that we can watch the sun go down in the evening. 

“How big is big?” Rey whispered to Ben as they followed Leia down the hall into the kitchen.

“Oh, just a couple hundred people, I think,” Leia said. “We’ll have plenty of space for everyone, don’t worry.” 

“Is there going to be food?” Ben asked, glancing at Rey. She smiled. _Priorities,_ she thought.

“Of course,” Leia said. “I’ve hired a good caterer, don’t worry. No one’s going to starve.”

The fact that Leia could say “No one’s going to starve” like it was a joke made Rey’s heart stutter. _People are starving every day on Jakku,_ she thought. _And yet here, safely in the capital of the New Republic, she’s acting like that’s a joke._ Senator or not, those words were cruel to someone who could barely scrape by. 

Ben must have noticed a shift in Rey’s demeanor, because he squeezed her hand like he was trying to ground her. “It’s okay,” he whispered, his lips close enough to brush her ear. “We can talk about it later.” And just like that, she felt herself relax just a little bit. Maybe if she explained it to him, he could say something to Leia, and she could bring it up with the government. Maybe. Assuming that Ben actually cared. Which he might not, considering this whole thing was fake.

Still, she’d have to try. After she ate her weight in whatever they were planning on eating for dinner, that was. 

The kitchen table was set with a couple of covered dishes laid out in the middle of it. A man was already sitting down, drinking a glass of blue milk. “Ben’s here,” Leia said to him. “And this is his girlfriend, Rey.”

The man nodded at Ben. “Glad to see you finally decided to come home for the holidays,” he said. “It’s about time.”

“I’ve been busy,” Ben said. He looked at Rey and waved his free hand at the man. “Rey, this is Luke. Luke, Rey.”

_This_ was Luke Skywalker? The legend? Rey was surprised (and a little disappointed) to see that he looked just like any other human man. Maybe it was the domestic setting and the glass of blue milk. She wondered if he had a lightsaber clipped to his belt. 

_On that thought...does Ben have a lightsaber?_ If he trained as a Jedi, he probably did, right? She hoped he’d show it to her before they parted ways.

Luke gave her a scrutinizing look. Rey swore she could feel him examining her somehow. “You didn’t tell me your girlfriend was Force-sensitive, Ben,” he finally said.

_Not this. Not right now._ She was still trying to shove that conversation into her mental “to think about later” box. She wasn’t ready to consider all of the implications of it yet. Nor was she ready to think about Ben’s offer to teach her, and what that would mean.

“It never came up,” Ben said to Luke. “He and I barely talk,” he explained to Rey. “I don’t know why he’s surprised.”

He’s _surprised?_ Rey wanted to yell. I’m _still barely able to process it!_ She needed to get out of that kitchen immediately and take a moment to shove all that knowledge away before she could continue interacting with these people, these legends _._

Either Ben was in tune with her enough to know that she was having an internal meltdown or it was just good timing on his part, because said something to Leia and a moment later, she was leading Rey and Ben out of the kitchen.

“I’ve made up your old room for you two,” Leia said as she led them upstairs. “There’s a set of towels in the fresher. Come down whenever you’re ready. I’ll give a shout when your father and Chewie get back.” She shut the door behind her, leaving Ben and Rey alone in the room.

“I’m sorry about Luke,” Ben said, dropping her hand and looking away from her. “I should have expected him to say something. He can be an asshole sometimes.” When she didn’t respond, he turned back to look at her. “Rey?” he asked. “Are you okay?”

She had no idea what in the universe possessed her to do it, but she felt the sudden urge to wrap her arms around him and she actually gave into it. He froze, and she worried that she’d overstepped. But then she felt him relax and wrap his arms around her, whispering an apology. “Just say the word and we can go back to Jakku right now,” he said. “I’ll still give you whatever you want. Portions, credits, whatever.”

Which was a whole other thing, because why would he suddenly let her go but still keep his end of the bargain? As overwhelmed as she felt, she was too proud to go back on her word. It was only fair to keep up her end of the deal. 

And anyway, she wanted that food. And...well, this hug was nice. She liked how warm and solid Ben was, and the way his breath tickled her ear when he whispered to her gave her a very pleasant fluttering feeling in her stomach. She’d never felt comfortable enough with any other being to do something like this. And the strangest part was, he was letting her. 

Almost as if he needed this just as much as she did.

“No,” she murmured. “I want to stay. I just...I need a minute.”

He loosened his arms and said, “Take all the time you need. I’ll be downstairs,” but stopped when she tightened her grip. She wasn’t ready to let go of him yet. Which was stupid, because this was all fake, but she was overwhelmed and he was the only remotely familiar thing around her right now and she didn’t want to let him go. 

“No,” she said. “You can stay. Please stay.” _How does this feel so familiar if we’ve only just met?_ she wondered. Probably just because he was there when she left Jakku for the first time ever. And because he was there when she stepped onto another planet for the first time. And because he understood what it was like to be abandoned by his parents. Rey hadn’t realized how deeply that connection impacted her until just now.

“Okay,” he whispered. She swore she felt the press of his lips against her temple, but she was probably just imagining things.

“I still don’t think I’m ready to talk about it,” she said. “It’s a lot to take in.”

He huffed a short laugh. “Sorry about that,” he said. “This was the stupidest idea I’ve ever had.”

“Do you regret it?”

He didn’t answer her right away. “I have never seen someone look as captivated as you did in Hanna City,” he finally said. 

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“I’m going to use that as an excuse to avoid spending time with my family. Get out and show you around Republic City. We can ignore everything else. I’ll talk to Luke and make sure he doesn’t bring up the Force again.” 

“I’d like that,” she said, finally feeling the tension relax from her shoulders. It occurred to her that she should probably let him go now that she wasn’t having a meltdown anymore. With difficulty, she forced herself to drop her arms and pull away. “I think I feel okay now,” she said, meeting his gaze. “Thank you." 

He shrugged. “It’s fine,” he said, looking away. “It’s my fault you’re here in the first place.”

Right. Speaking of _here_ … She gazed around the room and felt her face heat up when she noticed that there was only one bed. Ben must have realized what she was thinking, because he said, “I’ll sleep on the floor. Don’t worry about it.” 

That was stupid. “It’s a big bed,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll both fit.” She probably wasn’t going to get much sleep, anyway. She was a light sleeper, a habit from years of needing to be constantly on her guard at all times. But he didn’t have to know that.

They were saved from having to discuss it further by a commotion from downstairs. “That’s probably Han and Chewie,” Ben said. “Come on. Let’s go eat. If you change your mind, we can sneak off after dinner.”

Ben had never explained who or what Chewie was, but the sounds of Shyriiwook coming from the kitchen made it clear where Chewie was from. “You’re related to a Wookiee?”

“Kind of. He’s basically my uncle,” Ben said. “He understands Basic, but he can’t speak it. Sorry about that. I’ll translate.”

She shook her head. “No need. I know Shyriiwook.” She didn’t even have to look at him to know that he was gaping at her in surprise.

Logically, Rey knew that Ben’s father was another legend, but she still wasn’t prepared for the sight of the famed smuggler grinning as Leia ordered him around the kitchen. “Sure thing, Your Worshipfulness,” he said as he took a plate of food from her and put it on the table. 

“They get along much better when they spend half of their time apart,” Ben whispered to Rey. “I bet he’ll show you the _Millennium Falcon_ if you ask. I think he loves that ship more than he loves Leia half the time.”

Judging from his tone, it seemed like Ben wasn’t all that impressed by his father. But… “Really?” she breathed.

“Hey, Dad,” Ben called from across the room. “Think you could show Rey the _Falcon_ after dinner?”

“Rey who?” Han turned to look at them. “Rey the mysterious girlfriend you’ve told us next to nothing about?" 

“Yes, Rey the girlfriend. My girlfriend. Who is here. For the holidays. With me.” The words came out stilted, like he wasn’t used to saying them. Which, she realized, he probably wasn’t.

“Rey! Good to finally meet you,” Han said, walking over to shake her hand. “I was starting to think the kid was making you up.”

“I’m real,” she said, forcing a smile. “I’m definitely real. And Ben’s girlfriend. Really.” _Holy shit I’m lying to Han Solo._ The _Han Solo. What has my life become?!_

“I’d love to show you the _Falcon,_ ” he said. “Fastest ship in the galaxy. Made the Kessell Run in twelve parsecs.” Rey had always heard that it was fourteen, but if Han Solo himself was saying twelve, then all of the stories she’d heard were wrong. “But first, let’s eat,” he said.

**_He’s been complaining about how hungry he is for the past three hours_** _,_ the Wookiee said.

“I have not been _complaining_ ,” Han retorted. “Ben, did you introduce Rey to Chewie yet?”

**_I told you he wasn’t making her up_** _,_ Chewie said to Han. **_You owe me ten credits_** _._

“I’m real,” she said as Ben muttered something that she couldn’t catch. “It’s nice to meet you, Chewie.”

Han and Chewie exchanged glances. “You know Shyriiwook? You a trader, or something?”

“Something like that,” Ben said. “We get it. You thought I was lying. I wasn’t. Let’s all shut up and eat.” Rey was only too happy to comply. He pointed at each dish and explained what it was using words like _smokey_ and _savory_ and _grilled_ , like she had any concept of what those things referred to.

“She’s not used to eating homecooked meals,” Ben explained while Rey was busy trying every single food available. “Neither of us are. Not much call for a traditional kitchen when you’re in space most of the time.”

“Eat as much as you want, Rey,” Leia said. “Don’t be shy.”

_Oh, I intend to_ she wanted to say, but she was too busy stuffing her face with food. It was _incredible._ The flavors were so strong that some of it was almost difficult to eat, but she wasn’t going to let a single scrap of it go to waste. Hell, she’d eat something like this out of a dumpster. She didn’t even realize that she was making noises until Ben elbowed her gently, a slightly panicked expression on his face. “I’m sorry,” she said as soon as she swallowed. “It’s just really good food. I’ve never had anything like this before.” She looked at the table around her. Han and Leia looked like they were trying not to laugh. Luke was giving Ben a questioning look, but he’d kept silent throughout the meal, to Rey’s relief. She couldn’t understand what any of the looks meant; she’d have to ask Ben about it later.

“Glad Ben picked a woman who appreciates good food,” Han said. Ben muttered something under his breath, but Rey had already dug into her second plate of food.

 

* * *

 

“I’m sorry about dinner,” Ben said as they crawled into bed later on. “They’re all assholes sometimes. So am I, if you hadn’t noticed. I think it’s a genetic thing that I get from both sides.”

Rey had honestly been too engrossed in the food at dinner, and then after dinner, Han, Chewie, and Ben had taken her outside to show her the _Falcon._ “It’s fine,” she said. “I’m sorry your dad almost caught your lie.” 

“I think he seems convinced,” Ben said, smiling at her. “You’re good at this.”

“It takes two,” she said, blushing. _I’m only good at this because I think I actually want it to be real,_ she thought. Not that she’d ever say that to him. Probably. “We make a good team.”

“And with that, day two comes to a close,” he said. “The big party is tomorrow, and the day after that is officially just for the family to spend together, but unofficially it’s for everyone to nurse their hangovers from the night before. We’ll leave the day after that, unless you decide that you’ve had enough at any point. Just say the word and we’re gone.”

“I’m starting to think you want me to say I’m done so that you have an excuse to leave early,” she said, only half-joking.

“You’ve figured me out,” he said. “Congratulations.”

“Not yet,” she said. “Not completely.” She could tell that there was a bigger story than the one he’d given her, but she didn’t know how to ask about it. And anyway, she was too tired to figure it out now. Today hadn’t been as physically taxing as a day spent crawling through fallen Star Destroyers in the blazing Jakku sun, but waking up in a completely different part of the galaxy and then having nonstop new experiences was exhausting in a way that Rey had never been able to imagine previously.

Hell, she might actually sleep through the night for once. 

“Maybe I’ll tell you all about it someday,” Ben whispered, but Rey was asleep before she could say anything else.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Prosperity Tower is not canon. Just imagine a really tall building with a function room and balcony on the top floor.


	5. Totally platonic hair braiding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poorly-timed sex dreams, showers, and...hair braiding?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, some angst snuck in here. Sorry!
> 
> Note: in this AU, the events of Bloodline still half-happened, the major differences being: (a) Luke and Leia were more open about the Skywalker drama with Ben and (b) when the rest of the New Republic Senate found out, they didn’t go “well, clearly political views are genetically inherited” like they did in the book.

_“We should really practice this if we want to convince everyone that we’re dating,” Rey said as she pulled off her shirt. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath, giving him a full view of her breasts, nipples peaked despite the warmth of the room. Ben wanted to touch her, but he wasn’t sure where to start. Her face? Her waist? Her hips? He was pretty sure that going immediately for her breasts was not the best idea, no matter how tempted he was to flick his tongue over her nipples to see what expressions crossed her lovely face._

_“I don’t usually do this sort of thing,” he admitted, but he was already taking off his own clothes. “You seem to be the exception.”_  

_“Such sweet words for your fake girlfriend,” she said, pressing her lips to the side of his neck and sucking hard enough to leave a mark. “There, that will be proof that I’m real.”_

_Fuck. How was it possible that such a small action could make his cock twitch like that? But it wasn’t just the sensation of her lips and tongue on the sensitive skin of his neck, it was also the fact that she was proud of him. She wanted everyone to know she was with him._

_Ben hadn’t even known that he wanted something like that until now._

_“Rey,” he whispered. And then—_

He woke up wrapped around something warm. Something warm that was shifting around, trying to snuggle closer to him and rubbing against his— _OH SHIT I NEED TO MOVE._

Rey. _Rey_ was the warm thing snuggling against him. Rey, the woman he was paying to be his fake girlfriend for a few days. Rey, the woman he’d already agreed that this was a 100% sex-free transaction. Rey, the woman he’d just been having a sex dream about as she was _grinding against his cock_ in her sleep. 

There was going to be no good way to explain this if she woke up. Ben called on every second of his Jedi training as he gingerly extracted himself from behind her and stumbled into a cold shower. Which then didn’t even really do anything to calm him down because he knew she was asleep in his bed just on the other side of the wall.

Had she known what she was doing to him? He was feeling stupider and stupider by the second about this whole plan. _I’ve made a huge mistake,_ he thought as he gave in and wrapped a hand around his cock, desperately praying that Rey didn’t decide to wake up and go looking for him. 

After a rather rushed, muffled orgasm, he quickly rushed through the rest of his shower routine, willing his heart rate to go down. It wasn’t until he turned off the water and reached for a towel that he realized he hadn’t brought a change of clothes with him into the bathroom. Which he probably would have done, had he not been so desperate to get away from Rey before she could wake up and figure out what was happening. Maybe if he was lucky, she’d still be asleep and it wouldn’t be weird that he was just wearing a towel as he rummaged through his bag, looking for clothes.

He thought for a second that his luck had held, but then she stretched and said “Good morning” like she woke up in his bed every morning. His heart rate picked up again as he tried to figure out if she was aware of the state he’d woken up in. “Why is your hair wet?”

The question baffled him for a moment until he realized that she might not know about water showers. “No sonic shower here,” he said. The way she was looking at him— _Stars above, I think she’s checking me out._ “I, uh,” he said, unable to meet her eyes. “I forgot clothes.”

“I can see that,” she said, her eyes raking him up and down. “What does that have to do with your hair being wet?”

“Oh,” he said. “Right. No sonic shower. They use water here.”

She shot up. “Water showers? I thought those only existed in holofilms.” 

“They use them in some places,” he said. “Like here.”

“Show me,” she said, scrambling out of bed. “I won’t believe it until I can see it.”

Ben desperately didn’t want to be in close proximity to Rey while only being wrapped in a towel, but he didn’t have the heart to do anything other than follow her back into the room to show her how to use the shower. She was so excited she barely took a moment to shove him out the door before taking off her clothes.

He dug some clean clothes out of his bag and got dressed before wandering downstairs for a cup of kaf. He figured that she’d wander downstairs for food when she was done.

“Where’s Rey?” Leia asked as soon as Ben came downstairs.

“Good morning to you, too,” he grumbled. He was pretty sure that his parents already liked his fake girlfriend more than they liked him, because of course they did. “She’s in the shower. She’ll be down in a bit.” 

“She seems like a nice girl,” Leia said. “How did you two meet, again?” 

“I met her while on a job,” he said. 

“What kind of job?”

“A job job.”

She sighed. “Well, if you’d rather not talk about it—”

“I’d rather not.”

They sat in silence, only broken by Ben occasionally getting up to refill his cup of kaf. He rarely had the opportunity to drink anything other than the cheap, instant kind of kaf that he kept on his ship, and he wanted to savor it. By the third refill, though, Rey still hadn’t come downstairs, and Ben was starting to worry. She wasn’t used to so much water. What if she’d slipped and hit her head, or something? “I should go check on Rey,” he said, standing up. “She’s from a desert planet.” 

“Tattooine?” Leia said eagerly. “She and Luke should talk.”

“Not Tattooine and no, they shouldn’t,” he said on his way out of the room.

He could still hear the water going in the fresher, but he couldn’t hear anything else. “Rey?” he called through the door. “Are you okay?” He heard a muffled curse, which he took to mean _yes._ A minute or two later, he heard the water shut off and Rey emerged, hair dripping all over the carpet as she stood wrapped in a towel.

“That was amazing,” she said, cheeks and chest flushed. “I’ve never seen so much water in my life. I can’t believe people have access to that at any time they want.”

There it was again. That same expression, the one that said that she found everything that Ben considered mundane to be extraordinary. It was quickly becoming his new favorite thing, and he wanted to spend the day giving her reasons to wear that expression. “Get dressed,” he said. “I want to show you the city.”

 

* * *

 

Ben wasn’t actually from Republic City, but he had spent enough time there that he had a few favorite places to show Rey. Selfishly, he was using her as a way to get his parents to lay off on their constant questions about his life, but he did actually want her to enjoy herself while she was here, especially since she was still set on returning to Jakku at the end of this. He had to keep reminding himself of that, because he found himself starting to slip into the mindset of _But what if this was actually real?_ more and more as the day went on.

They made their way back to his parents’ house in the early afternoon, despite Rey’s protests that she wanted to see more of the city. “We still have hours until the party starts, don’t we?” she asked. 

“Yes, but we’ll need to get there early, and it’ll take a little while to get dressed up,” he said.

“I don’t think it takes that long to take off clothes. Or put them back on again.” _Did she do that intentionally?_ He wasn’t very good at reading between the lines.

“That’s what _you_ think,” he said. He was referring to the amount of time that it usually took people to dress up (braiding hair was no joke among Alderaanians), but judging from the way her cheeks turned pink, she’d interpreted it _very_ differently. “I’ll help you braid your hair,” he said, trying to pretend that he hadn’t implied the thing he’d just implied.

“I generally don’t need help with my hair,” she said, touching one of her buns. 

“When you’re attending an Alderaanian party hosted by their last princess, you do.” 

“Do _you_ need help braiding _your_ hair?” she asked. Her arm started to move as if she was going to touch his hair, but at the last minute she reached back to pull one of her buns out. He must have been mistaken, then.

“I usually don’t bother,” he said. “Much to my mother’s eternal disappointment.”

“Well, as your _girlfriend,_ ” she said, exaggerating the word, “I think you should let me help.”

“What, are you going to give me three buns like you have?” he asked, wondering if it would be okay to touch one. For someone with no access to showers or hair products, she had really nice hair. 

“You don’t think you’d look cute like that?” she said, leaning over to run her hands through his hair. She pulled some of it back and tied it in a small bun using the hair tie she’d just pulled out of her own hair. “Wow, your hair is really soft.”

He was positive that she could see how hard he was blushing by the tips of his ears, but she didn’t say anything about it as she continued to run her fingers through his hair. She was nearly sitting in his lap by this point. He found he didn’t mind the personal space invasion as much as he would if it had been anyone else. _She is_ definitely _the exception_ , he thought.

They were still sitting like that when the speeder arrived at his parents’ house. He felt cold all along where he’d just been pressed against her when she got out, but she grabbed his hand as if she was also desperate to regain that physical contact. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go braid hair.”

One of the (many) reasons why Ben had been avoiding coming home for the holidays for so long was that he hated getting dressed up like this. It just made him so self-conscious about everything: his height, his face, his hair, his ears, his general demeanor. _Everything._ The more time he had to spend dressing up, the more self-conscious he got. So he had very low expectations for this evening. 

What he didn’t count on, however, was Rey. Sure, he was still miserable and self-conscious, but it was hard to hold onto that as he explained the braiding thing to her. Somehow, she’d convinced him to sit so that she could put his hair into three buns while he talked. “I’m not wearing this out,” he’d said, but he hadn’t stopped her from running her hands through his hair.

“Sure you won’t. I’m going to go put on my dress. Don’t touch your hair.”

He didn’t even want to know what he looked like with his hair pulled back in three buns. It was a cute look on Rey, but his hair was shorter, and he could already feel it starting to fall out of the buns. No, if he had to spend the holidays with his family, he was going to continue to disappoint them. (He still hadn’t completely grown out of his teenage rebellion phrase, even at age 29.) 

“Ben?” Rey had opened the fresher door to stick her head out. “I need your help. I can’t figure this dress out.”

_What the kriff does_ that _mean?_ Was she about to walk out nak— _Don’t go there,_ he reminded himself. “Uh, sure.”

She stepped out and turned around before he could take a good look at the front of the dress. It was open in the back. Apparently, she was having trouble with the zipper. “I can’t believe that people have so many different types of clothing,” she said. “If I lived like this, I’d change my clothes ten times a day, just because I could.”

He smiled. “You’d have liked my grandmother, then,” he said. “She was from Naboo. She’s wearing different clothes in every holo of her that I’ve ever seen.”

“What was she like?” Was it his imagination, or did her breath hitch slightly as he gently tugged the zipper up? He tried to keep his fingers from touching the warm skin on her back, but it was difficult, as the dress was rather tight around her torso. 

“I don’t know,” he said, stepping back. “She died giving birth to Leia and Luke.” The sordid Skywalker family history was pretty well-known at this point, thanks to a political scandal a few years ago. Maybe that news hadn’t quite made it to Jakku. _It probably got lost among all of the rumors of Luke being a mythical creature,_ Ben thought. 

She turned, and he took in the sight of her in a dress. “Wow,” he breathed. “Green is a good color on you.” Not to mention everything else about the dress. It wasn’t much—a sleeveless dress with sheer mesh paneling on the waist and around the collar—but it fit her perfectly. _Remind me to thank Mitaka next time I’m on Chandrila._  

She snorted. “Your friend was right,” she said. “He told me you’d take one look at me in this dress and the first word out of your mouth was going to be ‘wow.’”

“Mitaka reads too many romance novels,” he said, a little embarrassed at how easily he’d crossed the line from ‘fake’ to ‘real.’ _Well, at least I won’t have to fake being attracted to her,_ he thought. That was either a good development to this plan, or a bad one. It remained to be seen.

“It’s strange not wearing trousers,” she said, shifting her hips slightly like she was a little uncomfortable. “Do you ever dress like this?”

“I don’t look good in green.” Dresses weren’t much his thing, either. They never had enough pockets.

She looked him up and down. “Really? I think you’d look good in anything.”

He scanned her face, expecting some sort of teasing expression, but she was completely serious. She said it like it was an objective fact, and he couldn’t figure out if she meant anything else by it. And when he realized that he was looking for that extra meaning... _Uh-oh._ _I think this plan just got a lot more complicated for me._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look you'll never convince me that men don’t wear dresses on a regular basis in the GFFA.


	6. Yes, they have mistletoe in space.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben’s not the only one who feels that this situation is getting complicated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope y'all had a lovely New Year! I would have posted this a couple of days ago, but the [RFFA 2019 winter fic exchange](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/RFFA_After_the_Blazing_Fire_Dies) went live, and I figured that we had enough new reading material for a little while. I have a fic somewhere in that collection, but you'll just have to guess which one it is until anon comes off in a few days :) Check the whole collection out; there are some really great works!

_Yeah, this trip is_ definitely _a hallucination_ , Rey thought as she and Ben entered the lift up to the 89th floor of the Prosperity Tower. She’d climbed through Star Destroyers that were probably taller than this, but the jolt of the lift as it began to move and the way her ears popped as they rose were sensations that she’d never experienced before. She didn’t realize she’d grabbed Ben’s wrist until he said, “Rey? Are you okay? Because if not, we can—”

“The lift is weird,” she said. She didn’t let go of him, though. Holding him helped steady her. The lift stopped with another jolt, and Ben twisted his wrist to hold her hand instead. “Okay,” she said, giving him a brief smile. “Let’s do this.” 

She was glad that he’d taken her out to show her Republic City that morning. She easily could have spent half the day in the shower, delighting in the sensation of water dripping off of her body, even as the hot water ran out. She wasn’t exactly sure what the bottles in the shower were, but whatever she’d used to wash her hair had made it soft and shiny. (She couldn’t figure out if it was weird or not that she now smelled a little bit like Ben. Either way, she really liked it.)

She liked being in his space. It had been difficult to resist the urge to lean in just to sniff him earlier in the speeder back to his parents’ house. She at least knew enough about what was considered ‘socially acceptable’ to figure _that_ out. And then there was the matter of the way he’d looked that morning, naked but for the towel wrapped around his waist, combined with the fact that she’d woken up in the middle of the night to find him curled up against her like it was a perfectly natural thing for them, and... 

Yeah. She was having a hard time keeping her hands to herself.

Why the _hell_ did a guy like that need to hire someone to be his fake girlfriend?

That was all under wraps tonight, though. She felt nearly naked in the simple dress and boots she was wearing, but Ben had assured her that she looked good. At least, that was how she interpreted his _Green is a good color on you_ comment from earlier. They didn’t exactly match—he was wearing black trousers and a black tunic with silvery-grey embroidery on it—but it suited him, and Rey was having a hard time keeping her eyes off of him. (She couldn’t figure out if it was made better or worse by the fact that she knew exactly what he was hiding under that tunic. She hadn’t even known that it was _possible_ for a human to have so much muscle.)

“Most of the guests will arrive later,” he said as they approached a set of big double-doors. “I figured you’d want to eat, though, and it’ll be easier to do now before we get accosted by my parents and all of their friends.”

“Am I that predictable?” she joked. 

“When it comes to food, yes,” he said, giving her another one of those half-smiles that made her stomach flutter.

The doors in front of them opened automatically onto the biggest room Rey had ever seen. There was a high, domed ceiling, with windows lining half of the round room. Tall doors opened onto a balcony on the other half of the room. There were no lights on in the room yet, but they would probably be lit soon, as the sun was hanging low in the sky past the balcony. True to its name, the Feast of Flowers had flowers of all sorts everywhere. Rey was almost overwhelmed by all of the different shapes, sizes, and hues of them. “I never knew there could be this much color from plants,” she said, leaning towards the side of the doors, where there was a plant creeping its way along the doorframe.

“A lot of these are native to Hosnian Prime, but some of them are flown in from other worlds,” Ben said, leaning in to examine the flower with her.

“It all feels so _alive_ ,” she said. “Not just the flowers in the room. This whole planet. I can feel how connected it is. I never knew it was possible to feel this.”

He looked surprised, then something registered for him. “That makes sense, actually,” he said. “Not much to feel on Jakku.” Upon seeing her questioning look, he clarified. “The Force,” he said. “It connects all living things, including you and me.”

They hadn’t brought the Force up again since Rey’s breakdown the night before, although it had been sitting at the back of her mind, waiting for her to process it more fully. “We’re...connected?” Why did that send a jolt through her body?

He turned red and hastily added, “Well, yeah, because everything is connected, and you and I are both Force-sensitive, and…” He trailed off, looking like he wasn’t sure if he should continue or not.

Maybe this was why she felt comfortable with in in a way she’d never felt with anyone else. She liked being near him, and finding excuses to touch him, and having experiences she never thought she’d be able to have.

The thought that this was going to end in two days stung. She didn’t want to think about that right now. “I don’t know what that means,” she confessed. “But I think I’d like you to show me.”

The way his face lit up was something she wanted to remember for a long time. “Really?” he said.

“Maybe not right now,” she said. “But yes. I want to understand that—our—connection.” She had a split second of _Oh stars, is he going to kiss me?_ that was interrupted by the sound of footsteps walking in their direction.

“Ben,” Leia said, smiling at them. She was dressed in a dramatic black dress, her hair braided elaborately. Ben had explained some of the significance of the complicated styles while arranging her hair, but she’d been too distracted by the feeling of his fingers running through her hair as he twisted it into place to pay attention to the words coming out of his mouth. “Rey, you look lovely.” She gave Ben a look that Rey didn’t understand and said, “Glad to see that you bother to follow _some_ of our traditions,” in a wry voice. “Welcome to the Feast of Flowers.”

“Oh. Um. Thanks,” Rey said. “It’s beautiful in here.”

“You should see it once the sun goes down and we turn on all the lights,” Leia said. “We’ll be able to watch the sunset from the balcony, too. It’s really beautiful from up here. And the way the city lights up as the sun goes down is worth watching as well. Very romantic.” She winked. 

Ben groaned. “Is this really necessary?” Rey couldn’t tell if his cheeks were pink because he was embarrassed by how blunt his mother was being, or because he was embarrassed that his “girlfriend” was actually fake.

“Come on, Ben. Lighten up. Rey’s the first partner you’ve ever brought home; I just want to give you both a romantic holiday evening. That’s all.”

Rey really wanted to know what the full story was there. Leia was trying so hard. Why was this so difficult for Ben? _Does it matter?_ she reminded herself. _You’re not actually his girlfriend._ And yet…

Was it all that strange that she wanted to know more about the person who had barreled into her life with the craziest idea in the galaxy?

“You know, we’re both really hungry. Had an early lunch. Come on, Rey. I’ll introduce you to traditional Alderaanian party food.” Without waiting for a response, he swept off in the direction of a number of long tables laden in food. Rey nodded at Leia for lack of better response before scrambling to catch up to Ben.

“Sorry about that,” he muttered when they were out of earshot of Leia. “She shouldn’t be putting you on the spot like that.” 

“It’s fine,” she said. “It’s what I’m here for, remember? To keep the attention off of you and your job.”

“Right,” he said slowly.

“So about this food…”

There were a number of tables laid out with more food than Rey had ever seen in one place. Like the flowers in the room, everything was a mess of different colors and shapes. If nothing else, this alone was worth this entire trip. Job. Whatever she and Ben were doing.

Kriff. How was she ever going to be able to live on Jakku again, after experiencing all of this? 

_Don’t think about that now,_ she told herself. _Shove those thoughts back in the box._ But between being able to live like this, and Ben’s offer to teach her about the Force, and the thought of spending more time with him and getting to know him better…

_This plan just got a lot more complicated for me,_ she thought.

“Rey?” The sound of Ben’s voice broke through her haze of confused, slightly panicked thoughts. “Are you okay?”

_Breathe, Rey._ “It’s a lot,” she said, unsure of how else to convey everything she was thinking. 

He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, then surprised her by giving her a quick kiss on the forehead, making her feel warm inside. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “I think I get it.” Upon seeing her questioning look, he added, “I’ve always hated this. The formality, and all of the people. Leia has never really understood why I avoid her parties. Her only kid, and I’m a constant disappointment to everyone in my family.”

He sounded so bitter. The way it tugged at her heart made her want to do something to bring out another one of those half-smiles he kept giving her. Maybe another kiss would do it? Before she could second-guess herself, she tilted her head up and kissed his jaw before murmuring, “I don’t think you’re a disappointment at all.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, blushing. “Come on. Let’s go eat before everyone else shows up.” 

Given the looks Ben’s family had given her at dinner the previous night, there were probably rules of some sort about the way she was supposed to eat. But when she was so used to barely getting enough to eat that she always licked the plate clean so as not to waste any food, she didn’t know what else to do. Ben hadn’t seemed to care, though, aside from the noises she was making, so she hadn’t put too much thought into it. _Right. Don’t moan while eating._ She could follow that rule. Probably.

He explained what each food was, suggesting the ones that were his favorites. Rey found that she loved the things that he called _savory_ , but the things he called _sweet_ were too strong. _Tart_ , however, was her favorite, and before long she was completely full. “I haven’t even tried half of these,” she complained. 

Ben, who had eaten less than she had, was amused by her reaction. “We can eat more later,” he said. “The food isn’t going anywhere.” 

“But your mom said that there were going to be so many people.” At that point, more people had started to arrive, and the room began to fill up. Already there were more people than Rey had ever seen in one place, and there were still more arriving. 

“There will be more food. Come on. Let’s check out the balcony. You can see for miles from up here.” She could almost hear him add _And it’ll be easier to hide from my mom_.

She’d known that Republic City was large from her exploration with Ben earlier that day, but she was still stunned by the sight of the buildings stretching for miles around them. “How many people live here?” she asked. 

“I don’t know. About fourteen million, I think.” Ben said.

“That’s so many people,” Rey said. “I can’t imagine that many people living on a single planet.”

“Fourteen million in Republic City,” he clarified. “I think it’s more like thirty million on the planet.”

She couldn’t even comprehend a number that big. No wonder it felt so alive around her. There were fewer than 25,000 people on Jakku. “You must think I’m so ignorant,” she said.

“I told you, I like the way you look when I show you these things,” he said. “And here are a lot of things that you know and I don’t.”

“Like?”

“How to build a speeder out of scrap metal,” he said. “How to fight with a quarterstaff.” (He’d made her leave it on his ship, promising that she wouldn’t need to carry it with her here.) “And how to style my hair into three buns, of course.”

She smiled. “You took them out,” she said, ruffling his hair.

He ducked away from her hand and smoothed out his hair. “Watch it,” he said, but he didn’t sound annoyed. 

“What, you don’t want your _girlfriend_ touching you?” she said, poking his shoulder. She liked the annoyed-but-not-actually-annoyed look he was giving her, so she continued to poke him—shoulders, arms, chest, stomach, face, wherever—until he finally got fed up and grabbed her wrists, turning her around so that she was pinned against him.

She was almost embarrassed by the way she melted into his touch. She wanted to lie and say that it was only because he was so warm and it was starting to cool down outside, but after spending the entire day trying to remind herself of the true nature of their relationship, she couldn’t resist giving into it. She was pressed close enough that she could feel his heart pounding against her back at approximately the same rapid tempo as hers, like he was just as surprised as she was by how easily they had fallen into this fake relationship.

“Not like that,” he said, his breath tickling her cheek.

“Oh yeah?” she said, mouth suddenly dry. “Then how?" 

Someone nearby cleared their throat. Ben let her go and stepped away faster than she could blink (which was good, because her face was now so hot that she needed the chilly evening air to cool it down). “Am I interrupting?”

“Hi Dad,” Ben said, sounding annoyed.

“The sun’s about to set,” he said. “Figured you and your girlfriend-who-is-very-much-real would like to get a front seat.”

Ben muttered something under his breath, but Rey was already following Han to the other end of the balcony, which had a better view of the sunset. “The kid’s tall enough that he can probably get a good view wherever he’s standing, but you might appreciate being a little closer.”

It was weird to hear Ben referred to as _kid_. “Has he always been that tall?”

Han laughed. “Kriff, no. Grew like a weed, that one. At one point we thought he was going to be taller than Chewie.” 

She glanced back at Ben, who’d finally decided to follow them. “You two make a cute couple,” Han said, following her gaze. “He must really like you, otherwise he wouldn’t have brought you home for the holidays.”

_Guess you don’t know him as well as you think,_ Rey wanted to say. _Because I’m a total stranger who he is paying to be here so that you will stop asking him questions about his life._ “I was pretty surprised when he asked me,” she said. “I didn’t want to turn down the opportunity to experience this.” That, at least, was true. 

“The Feast of Flowers sure is something,” Han said as they both leaned against the balcony railing. “I’m not from Alderaan myself, but this holiday means a lot to Leia. I know how much she appreciates you and Ben being here.”

Rey had no idea how to respond to that, but he didn’t seem like he expected one. A moment later, Ben joined them, leaning against the balcony railing on Rey’s other side. “My mom was right,” he said. “The view from up here is nice. 

She knew he was referring to the sight of the sun sinking below the mountains on the western edge of the city, but the way the late evening light his his eyes... _Yeah, the view_ is _nice._ “Rey,” he said, nudging her with his elbow. “Stop staring at me. You’re going to miss the sunset.”

_Right. Stop staring at your fake boyfriend._ “Sorry,” she said, tearing her eyes away to gaze at the city around them. Already she could see the city starting to change as lights in buildings and on streets came on, even though part of the sun was still peeking up over the horizon. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Does it always light up like this at night?”

“Sure, but you can’t get a view like this from just anywhere in the city,” Han said. “We’re lucky the weather held out. There was a chance it was going to rain tonight.”

She could have been experiencing _rain_? Screw sunsets; she saw plenty of those on Jakku. Rain was something completely new. She wondered if it would be like the shower earlier, or if it would be totally different. Maybe it would rain tomorrow, before she had to leave. She could only hope. 

There was still a little bit of light in the sky, even though the sun had now fully set. Rey wanted to stand outside and watch the city transition fully into night, but Han said, “Come on, Leia’ll be making her welcoming speech soon. We should be inside for that.”

“After her speech, we’ll maybe need to hang around for an hour or two before we can leave,” Ben whispered to her. “And then we can go do something else. Eat. Look at more lights. Whatever you—oh, kriff.” Something on the doorway above them caught his eye.

Han started to laugh. “You know what that means, kid,” he said. 

“What _what_ means?” said Rey, looking up. There was another kind of plant pinned to the top of the doorway. Did it have some sort of meaning?

“It’s mistletoe,” Ben said, turning red.

“What’s mistletoe?”

“If you end up under a sprig of mistletoe with another person, you have to kiss them,” Han said. “It’s an old tradition.” 

Oh. Kissing. Well, Rey _definitely_ didn’t have a problem with that. The question was, did Ben? She had no idea how to interpret his expression. Embarrassed, yes. Slightly apologetic, maybe? She couldn’t tell if the hint of _want_ that she saw on his face was just her projecting her own feelings onto him.

Either way, they had to act before Han started to catch on. And Ben seemed to be frozen in some sort of panicked embarrassment. _Well, if I must…_ Before she could think too hard about it, Rey wrapped her arms around Ben’s neck and kissed him, shamelessly ceasing the opportunity for all it was worth.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the words of a dear friend of mine, "Holiday movies are great because of the ways they blatantly engineer unrealistic scenarios where characters need to kiss."
> 
> I couldn’t find a number for the population of Republic City on Wookieepedia, so I used the population of Tokyo (the largest city in the world by population, as per [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo)), which is 13.8 million. The metropolitan Tokyo area has a population of 30 million, which is where the number for Hosnian Prime comes from. (Thanks to this fic, I now headcanon Republic City as being like Tokyo. Which makes Hosnian Prime...an entire planet of Japan?)


	7. let's go make out up in the balcony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens when you introduce a desert scavenger to rain?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to point out that the [song I’m referencing in the title of this chapter](https://youtu.be/33Wv0SQuqCc) also contains the line “you snooze you lose, well I have snost and lost” which is quite possibly the best song lyric ever

_Oh._

_My._

_Stars._

Kissing Rey was... _wow_.

Not that it was a long kiss. It was pretty quick, actually. Quicker than Ben would have liked, because he _really_ liked having her in his arms like this, and now all he could think about was how to make this happen more often without looking like a creep. Shit, he wanted to, like, _linger in the moment._

What was he doing? He _never_ had any interest in romance. He didn’t even realize that he’d wrapped his arms around Rey’s waist until she was pulling away, just a little bit. “Sorry,” she whispered. 

“Don’t be.” Was there a good way to say _Hey we should try doing more of that, maybe when my dad isn’t watching_? “I didn’t mind.” Maybe that would suffice while still sounding noncommittal enough that it wouldn’t be suspicious.

“I’ll remember that if I spot any more mistletoe,” she said, smiling at him. Okay. Maybe she now lowkey wanted to ditch the party to go make out, too. That made them even, right? “Come on. We’ll miss your mom’s speech.”

Ben hadn’t given two shits about the speech before the kiss, but now he cared even less about it than he had before. He let her tug him into the room, still in a bit of a daze. He knew Leia was speaking, but all he could think about was the way Rey fit perfectly in his arms, like they did that every day.

Kriff. He didn’t know he had the capacity to be this much of a romantic.

Things were a blur of awkward small talk and introductions to people his parents knew that Ben knew he would forget the second they walked away. To his relief, Rey managed the small talk about as well as he did. Not that either of them handled it particularly well, but nobody questioned the validity of their relationship, so the plan was working. Mostly.

“Do you know how to dance?” Rey asked. They’d managed to extract themselves from a conversation with some of Leia’s colleagues ( _ha, take that, Mom; you can’t try to set me up with Joph or Greer again_ ) and were lingering near the dance floor.

“Why, do you?”

“No. There’s not much in the way of music on Jakku.”

“Do you want to try?” He couldn’t figure out where she was going with the conversation.

She looked at the dancers and shrugged. “Honestly? I’d rather go outside and look at the city.”

He wasn’t going to argue with that. There were fewer people outside, too. Ben wondered if Rey was going to be bothered by the chill that had started to set in, but she didn’t complain. “Can you point out any of the places we went today?” she asked when they were back outside, leaning against the balcony railing again.

“I don’t know Republic City well enough,” he said. “I can’t even find my parents’ house from here.”

“You’re not from here?”

“I was born on Chandrila, but I don’t really consider any one place my home, I guess,” he said. “I lived in Hanna City for a little while, then I lived here briefly, then I lived with Luke with the new Jedi Order he was creating. And then I got a little older and realized that it wasn’t for me, and I’ve been living out of my ship ever since then.”

“Do you like living like that?”

He’d never asked himself that before. “Sometimes,” he said. “It gets loud with other people around. Not just the sound, but the way I can sense them all in the Force. And I can’t stand most people. Even with my family, I can handle about three days of them per year.”

“I sense a ‘but,’” she said, still gazing out at the city around them.

“I can feel the connections between everything, but I don’t feel connected to any of it,” he said.

Something about that caught her attention, and she turned to face him. “You’re lonely,” she said softly.

“So are you.” He couldn’t say _how_ he knew that, but he knew with complete certainty that she was just as lonely as he was, and maybe that was the reason she’d accepted this crazy offer in the first place.

“I live in a wrecked AT-AT by myself in the desert,” she said. “Of course I’m lonely.”

“Why don’t you leave?”

“I can’t,” she said. “I have to wait for my parents.”

He wondered what that was like, believing so strongly that your family would return for you that you willingly hung around a place like Jakku. Besides, after they’d abandoned her like that, why did she even want to see them again? Did she realize that they were probably never coming back by now?

“But,” she added when he didn’t respond, “I can see why you wouldn’t understand, after seeing how you live.”

“This isn’t how I live,” he said. “Not really. I’d rather wander around the galaxy alone than be stuck here for the rest of my life. My parents didn’t do anything for me when I was a kid. They don’t get to decide that I’m worth spending time with now that I’m an adult.” He hated how bitter he sounded but...well, if he couldn’t be honest with the person who was only going to be in his life for five days, then who?

_Only five days._ And this was day three. What were they going to do after this? She was set on returning to Jakku, and even though he thought it was a waste of time to wait for a family who had left her behind, he didn’t want to try to coerce her into staying with him. And there was no way in hell he was going to consign himself to a life on a place like Jakku, even to be with her.

“Hey,” she said softly, wrapping her arm around his waist. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that you should stay here instead of doing whatever you want to do.”

It was so natural to put his arms around her shoulder that he barely even realized he was doing it until she pressed her lips to his cheek briefly. Was she doing that just for show? It wasn’t like there were a lot of people on the balcony. The rain that Han had mentioned was threatening to fall now, judging by the clouds in the sky. (Ben wasn’t sure which was worse, getting caught in the rain on a chilly night, or having to interact with anyone else at this party.)

“I know,” he said.

They stood in silence for a while, until Rey shivered hard enough to shake Ben. “Are you cold?” he asked, rubbing the side of her arm. “We can go inside, if you are.”

“No,” she said, shivering again. “I like it out here. Besides, I’m your excuse for avoiding the party, remember?”

“You don’t have to freeze on my account.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “You’re warm.” As if to emphasize her point, she pressed herself even closer against his side.

Well, he had no complaints about that _._ Actually, this worked out completely in his favor, because it gave him the opportunity to pull her into his chest as he wrapped both arms around her. “Better?” he said.

“Mm-hm. Hey, Ben?”

“Yeah?” _Oh no what am I doing wrong am I overstepping am I—_

“Can I kiss you again?”

It took a moment for the words to register properly in his brain. A long enough moment that Rey started to take that as a _no_ and babbled an apology that Ben didn’t quite hear because he was too busy thinking _what_ and _why_ and _yes please, immediately_. He cut her off mid-apology before he could think too much about it, tilting her face up and clumsily pressing his lips to hers.

It was a little awkward at first. Ben hadn’t really had any practice with this. He got the sense that Rey hadn’t, either, judging by the way she was also trying to figure out the optimal way to tilt her head and place her hands. But then a moment later, things clicked into place, and all he could focus on was every little sensation that came down to Rey: the way her fingers had tangled in his hair, the taste of yuzu tart on her lips, and the breathy little moan she let out when he experimentally nipped at the sensitive skin on her neck. He could feel such a strong connection in the Force that he swore he could feel echoing sensations on his own skin as he soothed the mark he’d left with his tongue.

He was dimly aware that something had changed in the air around them, but it wasn’t until Rey pulled away suddenly with a delighted yelp that he realized it was raining. “Ben,” she said, shaking him. “Look!”

_Only someone from a desert planet would get this excited about being soaked on a chilly night,_ he thought. “We should probably go inside before it starts raining harder.”

“It rains _harder_?” she said, holding out her hands to catch raindrops in them. “There’s already so much of it!”

The fabric of Rey’s dress was darkening with each drop that fell. Ben could feel the rain dampening his own clothing and held back a grimace. _How is she not miserably cold yet?_ he wondered. “Rey,” he said. “I really think we should go in before—”

As if on cue, the skies opened up and unleashed the full force of a Hosnian Prime rainstorm on them. They were both immediately soaked to the bone, and yet Rey still didn’t want to go in. She said something, but he couldn’t hear her over the sound of the rain pouring down onto the city around them. “What?” he yelled.

“How is this real?” she shouted, pointing up at the sky.

_Unbelievable. Caught in the middle of a rainstorm, and she_ still _looks incredible._ Ben knew that he looked like a drowned rat standing next to her. The rain was making his clothing cling to his body uncomfortably, and he already couldn’t wait until he could get home and throw it all off. But Rey…

Not that her dress had been loose in the first place, but it clung to her body like a second skin, giving him a good idea of exactly how muscular she was thanks to years of scavenging in the sand. And there was something about the way she’d stopped to look at him that made him wonder if she was thinking the same thing about him.

Not that he could really see her expression in the dark, though. Maybe she was just wondering why he didn’t think that rain was as miraculous as she did. He didn’t have the heart to stop her as she spun around in the rain, splashing in the puddles that were forming on the balcony.

Ben didn’t realize how completely fucked he was until he caught himself thinking _I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful than the sight of Rey spinning around in the rain._ “Rey,” he said as she started to slow down. She was visibly shivering now, as was he. “Let’s go home.”

“But the rain…”

“It’ll still be raining at my parents’ house. As a bonus, we can dry off and enjoy the rain alone. I mean,” he added hastily, “not at the party, with all of the people around.” This was the perfect excuse to leave early, actually. _Thank the Force for surprise rainstorms._ It didn’t have the best timing, but...well, maybe they could go home and continue where they’d left off, assuming that Rey didn’t decide to spend all night standing in the rain.

(Not that he would deny her that, if she wanted it. _I. Am. So. Fucked._ )

There was no way to sneak out of the party when they were dripping all over the floor. Ben _may_ have overridden some security protocols using the Force to let them sneak out through the kitchens, and by the time they managed to catch a speeder back to his parents’ house, Rey was shivering so hard that her teeth were chattering. He was debating whether or not to pick her up and carry her inside when she surprised him by rushing into the house when the speeder dropped them off.

“I thought it would be more like the shower this morning,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself. “But now I’m just cold.”

“Take off your clothes,” he said. Half a second after the words were out of his mouth, he realized what he’d said and mentally kicked himself for ignoring all of the context clues. “I mean,” he said, desperately trying to backtrack, “Not right here! Not unless—” He’d been about to say _Not unless you want to_ , but that probably wouldn’t have improved the situation at all. As much as he wanted to pick up where they’d left off on the balcony, he was acutely aware of the _this is a non-sexual agreement_ part of their deal, and he didn’t want to make her feel pressured to do anything she didn’t want to do.

She smirked at him, like she knew where he’d been going with that statement, but she didn’t say anything as she grabbed his hand to pull him towards their— _his_ ; _they_ weren’t really a thing—room. “It’s a good thing that you people have so many different types of clothing,” she said as she rummaged through her bag for something dry to wear. “Does this happen to you often?”

“Seeing as I spend most of my time in space, no,” he said, pulling his tunic off. _Ugh. RIP, clothing._

“Oh, right, I forgo—” She turned around and nearly dropped her clothes at the sight of him.

_Oh, shit._ This was not what she signed up for. “Hold on, I have something to put on,” he said. “I have a cowl or something.” _What the—a_ cowl _? Really?_

“No!” she said. “No, it’s fine. Sorry, I shouldn’t stare. I just...how are you real?”

“What?”

“I’ve never seen a human with so much muscle before,” she said. “You’re...yeah.” She said it like it was supposed to mean something to him. He couldn’t figure out if she was insulting him or not. 

She didn’t stop staring, though, and when the silence started to become awkward, he muttered something about getting towels. She silently followed him into the fresher, making him jump when he turned around to see her standing mere inches away from him, close enough for him to see the wet wisps of hair that had come loose from her braids. _How does she still look so good?_ he wondered for the thousandth time. “I can’t take this dress off by myself,” she said. “I don’t understand how the clasp works.”

This was definitely not what _either_ of them signed up for. “Turn around,” he said, throat suddenly dry.

_Don’t think about how in approximately thirty seconds, Rey is going to be standing in her underwear right in front of you_ he tried to tell himself as he gingerly tugged the zipper down, exposing more and more of her back. “There,” he said hoarsely.

He expected her to move, but instead she said, “I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable earlier. When I kissed you.”

_We_ really _need to not be having this conversation while she is standing half-dressed in front of me._ “I didn’t mind,” he said, praying that he didn’t sound as strained as he felt. “Did you mind?”

“Me?” she said, turning her head to look at him. “No, not at all. I mean, I was the instigator, so. Definitely not.”

Ben had no idea if it would be at all appropriate to say _So how about we go make out some more right now_ , nor did he know what kind of response Rey was looking for. “I don’t usually do this sort of thing,” he said, figuring that honesty was the best course of action.

“Hire scavengers from desert planets to be your fake girlfriend for a few days?”

“Definitely not, and not what I meant,” he said, unable to hold back a grin. “I promise this is not what I had in mind when I met you. But…” He had no idea how to articulate this next part. 

Rey seemed to understand, though. “I don’t usually do this sort of thing, either,” she said softly, turning to face him. She still hadn’t taken her dress off, and the wet fabric still clung to her body. “But there _is_ something here, isn’t there?”

“Yes.” There was no point in denying it.

“So why don’t we keep pretending this all is real,” she said. Was it his imagination, or did her voice catch slightly on the word _pretending_? “But take it a step further.”

“Further how?”

Wordlessly, she slid the dress off and let it drop to the floor in a wet heap at her feet, leaving her standing nearly naked in front of him. “We could warm each other up,” she suggested.

_This is either going to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me, or the worst._ “You know, there’s this wonderful invention called a ‘hot shower’…”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...not sorry to have left on this cliffhanger, though :)
> 
> Continuing on the theme of “Hosnian Prime is apparently Japan, now,” [yuzu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_junos) is a Japanese citrus fruit and may or may not have some sort of equivalent in SW canon. I don’t know.
> 
> Is rain romantic? If you’ve been living on Jakku for as long as you remember, probably. Alternatively, can you tell how many times I've seen _[The Notebook](https://youtu.be/68dxDj0fjxs)_?


	8. “I can show you my lightsaber, if you want.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is that a euphemism?”

Rey had never slept so well in her life. She’d been so _tired_ after the day yesterday.

Well. More from the night, if she was being honest.

They actually hadn’t stayed in the shower too long. They’d both gotten rather distracted and she didn’t like the thought of wasting so much water if she wasn’t actually going to enjoy it. Plus, moving from the shower to Ben’s bed was a definite improvement, because it meant that she could pin him down and take her time exploring him. _Kriff, the_ muscles _on this guy._

He hadn’t been complaining as she ran her fingers, lips, and tongue all over his body, though. On the contrary, he practically begging her by the time she’d decided that she’d had enough of his chest (for the time being) and had started moving lower. And he actually _was_ begging by the time she wrapped her lips around the head of his cock, determined to know how he tasted and what sounds he’d make as he spilled down her throat. After, he’d pulled her up for a sloppy kiss and murmured all sorts of praise that had Rey feeling _very_ warm inside.

Not that she hadn’t been about to beg for attention from him. He’d made it very clear how much he wanted to return the favor, and she made it equally as clear that her answer was _yes, please, now_.

She lost track of time, her attention narrowed down to the way Ben was touching her and the absolutely _wonderful_ things he was doing with his lips and tongue. If she’d been capable of rational thought, she would have been embarrassed at how loudly she moaned when she came. She didn’t even know that it was possible to feel an orgasm throughout her entire body, the intensity radiating through every single nerve.

The best part, though?

Afterwards, as she and Ben were curled around each other—she wasn’t sure who had reached for who first—she’d started thinking about how _right_ it all felt. Which then led her down the path of _but it’s only pretend, remember?_ She must have let off a nonverbal distress signal of some sort, because he kissed her forehead before tilting her chin up so that he could look her in the eye and say, “Don’t be afraid. I feel it, too.” And she felt like maybe, it was okay to want more of this.

Whatever _this_ was.

She woke before him the next morning, the lazy sensation of not having to wake up and immediately get to work feeling peculiar to her. Stars, was this how normal people slept? But no, Ben had said that he didn’t normally live like this. So maybe it was just as foreign for him, too.

_I don’t want this to end yet,_ she thought as she slowly turned over so that she could look at him. They’d drifted off mid-conversation about something mundane, like the optimal way to hotwire a speeder. At the time, it had been too dark to notice the little marks covering his neck and chest that she must have left. She flushed as she realized how many there were, and she wondered if she was equally as bruised. Her movement must have woken him up, because he asked “What are you staring at?” in a sleepy murmur.

“There are little marks all over you,” she said. “Proof that I’m real.” She meant it as a joke, but judging by the way his eyes flew open, she’d hit a sore spot. Han was an asshole for making that bet with Chewie, even if it was _technically_ true that Ben didn’t have a girlfriend.

“I don’t think I’m creative enough to make someone like you up,” he said.

Rey didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. “What did you have in mind when you told your parents you had a girlfriend?”

“Human,” he said, kissing her. “Female. Not too old and not too young. How old are you, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Around nineteen standard years, I think.”

“You _think_?”

“Age isn’t all that important on Jakku,” she said. She didn’t have a family name, either, but she didn’t want to open that can of worms right now. “I’m old enough to take care of myself. That’s all that matters.” The look he gave her was a little too close to pity for comfort, so she kissed him before they could continue the conversation.

“You know,” he said as she trailed kisses down his neck ( _what the hell, may as well leave more marks_ ), “we don’t have anywhere to be this morning…”

 

* * *

 

"Close your eyes and reach out."

"Reach out for what?"

"Reach out with your feelings." Before she could ask exactly what Ben meant, he added, "I know you can do this, Rey."

She appreciated the vote of confidence, but as she closed her eyes and reached a hand out in front of her, she couldn't help but feel like a total idiot.

"No, not like that," he said. She cracked open an eye to see Ben grinning at her. She had a brief moment of feeling offended that he was making fun of her before her sense of _Wow, he has a really nice smile_ took over.

_We're pretending, remember?_ she reminded herself. _This relationship has an expiration date._

"It's like..." he said, then he paused. "Maybe it'll be easier for me to show you this way." He sat down on the ground in front of her. They'd gone to some quiet public park, away from his parents' house. Han had made a few snide comments at the marks on Ben's neck, rendering both Ben and Rey red-faced, and Ben's response had been along the lines of _Fuck off_ and _We're not spending the day locked up here_. Besides, the weather was nice, despite all of the rain the night before. Everything was green and cool and refreshing in a way that nothing ever was on Jakku, and Rey didn't want to waste a single second of it indoors if she didn't have to.

"Okay," she said, her pulse fluttering as he leaned in to reach for her hands. She wasn't sure why the simple contact still affected her so much, especially given that they'd spent half the morning in bed together, but there was something about the way that the skin-to-skin contact felt that she'd never experienced with any other being. Maybe it was a Force-sensitivity thing. She was too embarrassed to ask Ben, though. She wasn't sure she'd be able to explain it properly.

"Close your eyes and focus on me," he said. She did as he said, giving his hands a quick squeeze to let him know that it was okay to continue. "Can you sense me?"

"I can hear you," she said. _And smell you, and I would love to taste—_

Ben cleared his throat. "Focus, Rey," he said. "I know you can feel the life around you. Narrow down your focus until it's just you and me."

She took a deep breath. "Okay," she said. _Right. I can do this._ She timed her breaths with Ben's, trying to tune out the flutter she felt at being so in sync with him. And...there, that was it. Maybe? "I think I see you," she said. "Not—not like normal sight, but something else. Stars, you're _beautiful_." And he was. She had the sense of something powerful and light with dark cracks running through it. She leaned in towards him a little more, her eyes still closed. She wanted to get closer and entwine her signature with his, to help sooth over the jagged cracks. Not because she was some pure being who had to save his soul—stars above, Rey knew she was far from perfect, and saving his soul was not her kriffing job—but because she could sense that loneliness that was a twin for hers and she wanted to ease the sting of it for him.

"I—beautiful? Really?" Ben sounded skeptical, and Rey had a feeling that if she opened her eyes, she'd see him red-faced and flustered.

"Yes," she breathed. "Is this what it's like? Sensing another Force-sensitive?"

"Everyone has a unique signature," he said.

"Will I always know you by your Force signature?" she asked without thinking of the implications of that statement. He inhaled sharply, and her eyes flew open to see his eyes flitting over her face, like he was trying to parse her expression. "I mean, theoretically," she added quickly. "If this were, you know..."

"Real," he said softly. He withdrew his hands from hers and stood up. "I don't know," he admitted. "I've never felt this strong of a connection with any other Force-sensitive." He said the words so quietly that she almost thought she was imagining things. _That's real_ , she thought. _This connection_.

"If it's any consolation," she said, pushing herself to her feet, "I've never felt this strong of a connection with anyone, period."

Ben gave her a small half-smile. "What else do you know about the Force? Or the Jedi?"

"You carry lightsabers, and you can make things move," she said. She'd figured that one out at a young age, but she couldn't explain how it worked.

He snorted. "I guess that's the legacy of the Jedi of the Old Republic," he said. "They had fancy weapons and flying rocks."

"They. Not you?"

He shook his head. "I'm not a Jedi. I've trained as one, and I've studied the ways of the Force, but that life...it isn't for me. I tried, but to Luke's eternal disappointment, I hated it. Too much sitting around meditating. I wanted to do something more active. Explore the galaxy. I don't like feeling the weight of the Skywalker legacy hanging on my shoulders."

Rey couldn't understand that. Not wanting to be a part of a family? That was all she'd wanted, as far back as she could remember.

As if sensing that the conversation was about to delve into uncomfortable territory, Ben looked her up and down and said, "I can show you my lightsaber, if you want."

"Is that a euphemism?"

His answering laughter made Rey's heart flutter, and she didn't push him away when he pulled her in for another kiss.

 

* * *

 

They ended up getting chased out of the park half an hour later by a shocked protocol droid screeching at them about public indecency laws.

"I never thought that I would ever be the type of person to get caught fooling around in public," Ben said once they’d stopped running.

"It wasn't that bad," Rey said, feeling self-conscious as she struggled to fasten her belt. "You had your hand down my trousers. I’ve seen worse in the middle of Niima Outpost." She was trying to figure out the best way to say _So can we pick back up where we left off now?_ when Ben beat her to it and suggested they head back to where he'd parked his ship near his parents' house.

"Is that droid going to tell your mother that you were caught fingering me in public?" Rey whispered in his ear as they climbed into a speeder taxi.

"Can you not use the phrases 'your mother' and 'fingering me' in the same sentence?"

She laughed. She liked seeing him flustered like this. And despite what he'd said, he was still very interested in picking back up where they'd been interrupted. If she hadn't known from the way she could sense him all around her in the Force, then she would have from the way he was shifting about in his seat in an attempt to hide the noticeable tent in his trousers. "Fine," she said, smiling at the way he shivered when she whispered in his ear. "Tell me, what do you plan on doing to me once we've relocated to somewhere more private?"

 

* * *

 

She could easily have spent the rest of her time on Hosnian Prime in Ben's bed, but once her stomach started rumbling, he wouldn't let her ignore it. Rey had wanted to protest— _Don't worry about it, I'm used to starving_ —but judging by the looks Ben kept giving her whenever food was mentioned, he wasn't going to be comfortable letting it go. It was so strange, like she was counting the passage of time by meals, and if she skipped the next one, maybe they could put off leaving just a little while longer. 

Ben's family must have already eaten dinner, because the kitchen was empty save for some covered dishes that were still a little warm. "I'm not sure where they all went," he said as he handed Rey a plate. "Work, probably." He sounded frustrated by it, but Rey didn't mind. Spending time around the Skywalker-Solo-Organa family was intimidating. Watching them talk was like having secret access to a life that she'd never have. It was unsettling. And it made her think about how maybe, just because someone is your blood relative, doesn't mean they'll stick around for you or do right by you. That line of thought was even more unsettling than the last, because if she started to think about it too hard, then maybe she'd—

"Are you okay?"

Rey blinked. She hadn't realized she'd been staring off into space. "Sorry, what were you saying?"

He gave her a wary look. "You went somewhere else for a moment," he said. "You felt...unsettled."

"I'm fine," she said, pushing all thoughts about her family out of her mind. "Tell me about this food."

He was only too happy to oblige. Rey couldn't understand why it made him so happy to feed her. It was almost like...like he wanted to take care of her. For real. Not pretend.

_You know you're not pretending, right?_ a little voice in her head told her. _Neither of you are. Idiots._

Ben picked up on her subdued mood, shooting her worried looks as they ate, but he didn't push it until they'd finished eating and had shut themselves up in his old room again. "What's wrong?" he asked, cradling her face in his palms. "Tell me."

"What are we doing?" she said.

He froze, then sighed and stepped back. She felt the loss of contact like a day’s scavenge being swallowed up by the sand. "I don't know," he said.

"We're not pretending."

"No," he said quietly. "We aren't."

The silence stretched on, neither of them able to put in words what they were thinking. Ben was the first one to break. "I like you," he said. "A lot. And I—"

"I don't want this to end," she said, cutting him off before she could lose her nerve.

Was it possible for someone to look simultaneously relieved and scared? If so, Ben was managing it right now. "Me either," he whispered.

"I have to go back to Jakku," she said. "I have to wait for my parents."

He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but instead, he kissed her on her forehead. "I know," he murmured.

Rey didn’t want to spend the last night of this strange trip crying, which is where the conversation seemed to be heading. “Come on,” she said, tilting her head up to meet his lips with hers. “Let’s make the most of it. I bet I can make you come so hard you forget your own name.”

She knew that he wasn’t going to completely sweep the conversation under the rug, but...well, he definitely wasn’t going to pass on _that_ challenge. “I’d like to see you try, sweetheart.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to rewrite this chapter twice before scrapping my original outline because it kept sliding into hardcore angst, which is not what I want out of this fic. As it is, there’s a bit of angst, but that’s just what happens when...well, obligatory reylo drama, and all that.


	9. The bantha in the room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uh-oh.

Never in a million years would Ben have ever thought that lying to his mother about having a girlfriend would end up with him actually finding a fake girlfriend who was kind of completely perfect for him.

(She had, in fact, made him come so hard he forgot his own name. Not hers, though; the whole neighborhood had probably heard them last night. He prayed his parents wouldn’t bring it up.)

Not only had he managed to stumble into someone whose strength in the Force could rival his own, but she saw and understood all of the...less-than-nice parts of him, _and_ the sex was incredible. (Which was weird, because that was something Ben had never, ever expected to say about anyone.) He was pretty sure that the Force was more sentient than most beings gave it credit for and that it also had a wicked sense of humor, especially where the Skywalker family was concerned. Ben was finally beginning to understand all of those warnings about emotional attachment leading to something treacherous. Even though this thing with Rey was still new, he knew in his bones that what they had wasn't something that they could easily walk away from.

However, there was the issue of his job and her unending quest to be reunited with her family, and those two factors seemed like they were going to put a pin in their relationship real fast.

Still. It wasn't wrong for him to want to take these few moments before they had to get up to start the trip back to Jakku, was it? It wasn't even about the sex; they were both pretty thoroughly fucked-out at this point. No, Ben was just really enjoying the simple skin-to-skin contact of sleepy, naked spooning.

He felt Rey starting to stir, and he had a quick moment of thinking _I should pretend to sleep so that we don't have to get up just yet_ that was quickly squashed when he remembered that she could read him in the Force. "Good morning," he murmured into her hair.

"Mm," she said, turning around to face him. "Hi." She seemed about as reluctant to get up as he was (for the same reasons, he was sure), but the moment was ruined by the sound of his stomach grumbling. Ben would have been content to skip breakfast, but Rey pushed him away and said, "Come on, let's get something to eat" before he could react. Which was fine, actually; he didn't want to ruin her chance to eat another full, healthy meal. How the kriff did she think she was going to manage on Jakku after this?

He shook himself. She'd been fine before him, and she'd be fine after him. She could take care of herself. But Ben...well, he didn't want her to have to take care of herself. And that scared him.

Han, Luke, and Chewie were nowhere to be found when he and Rey stumbled into the kitchen in desperate search of kaf and calories. "Are you two leaving today?" Leia said, pouring three cups of kaf.

"We are," Ben said, taking one of cups and handing another to Rey.

"Don't forget to say goodbye to your father and uncles before you leave," Leia said. Ben rolled his eyes. "I have to leave soon. Work," she said, giving Ben and Rey a "what can you do?" look. 

_Of kriffing course she has work._ Ben didn't know why he expected any different. But a little later on, as he and Rey were finishing the last of the breakfast food, Leia poked her head into the kitchen to say "Ben? Can I talk to you for a second?"

He saw Rey give him a questioning look, but she didn't say anything. "I'll be right back," he said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek (because why not?).

He wasn't sure what he was expecting Leia to say, but he followed her into her home office anyway. "Rey is really good for you," she said, sitting at her desk. "You two have a good thing going. I hope you realize that." 

Kriff. He was _not_ having this conversation with his mother. "She's amazing," he said quietly. 

"You seem happier than I've seen you in a long time," she said, giving him a look that Ben could only describe as fond. _What the hell is happening?_ he wondered. "She really loves you. I can tell."

"Just because you're Force-sensitive doesn't mean you know how to read people in the Force," Ben said gruffly.

"I'm a Skywalker. Of course I know how to read people in the Force. For example, I know that you don't to be having this conversation with me—"

" _Mom_."

"—but you need to hear this from someone, and I know you don't have a lot of friends these days. I care about you, Ben, despite what you may think." 

Was it really that obvious that he'd been trying to avoid her, and why? Ben's first instinct was to spit back that she didn't get to give a shit about his life now when she hadn't cared enough to stick around when he was a kid, but he was surprised to find that the urge to say something caustic passed quickly.

"Make sure she knows she's welcome here anytime, with or without you," Leia said. “But I hope that it’s with you. You two deserve to be happy.”

 

* * *

 

"Is everything okay?" Rey asked, seeing Ben's dazed expression as he walked back into the kitchen.

"I think so," he said, still struggling to make sense of the conversation he'd just had with Leia. "My mom was just telling me that she likes you. That's all."

Rey's face turned red as she simultaneously radiated happiness and embarrassment in the Force. "She does?"

Ben had never really let go of his frustration at being the semi-burnout child of war heroes. He used a pseudonym when setting up jobs (‘Kylo Ren’ sounded way more badass than ‘Ben Solo’—at least, that's what eighteen-year-old Ben had thought), partially because people appreciated discretion when hiring bounty hunters, but mostly because he hated the way people reacted when they found out who his family was. They'd find out that his parents were Leia Organa and Han Solo, and then they'd have high expectation of Ben that he'd never be able to meet. It had always pissed him off, but with Rey...well, she'd gone into this whole thing with very low expectations of Ben, and she'd never let the fact that he was related to such famous people color her expectations of him. And it seemed like she was more flattered by the idea of Ben's mother liking her than Leia Organa liking her.

The shift in perspective made all the difference in the galaxy to him. 

The small smile Rey was giving him was making his heart beat, and he couldn't help returning it. It faded after a minute, replaced by something tense. "When are we leaving?" she asked softly. 

Right. The return to Jakku. The return to Jakku, so that Rey could wait around for a family that was probably not coming back for her. The return to Jakku, which they'd agreed on as part of this deal that was absolutely not supposed to involve... _this_. "Around midday, I think," he said, looking at a chrono. "We've probably got an hour or so before we should head out. I have to say goodbye to my family before we leave. It'll probably be a while before I'm back, and I don't need to give them a reason to chase me around the galaxy." Rey's presence had certainly caused his family to forget about his mysterious job, and they hadn't questioned him for avoiding them. Ben felt his face heat up thinking about Han's comments about the marks Rey had left on his neck. He didn't usually have prophetic dreams from the Force, but there was something uncanny about the fact that he'd dreamt about something that Rey was going to say to him a day later.

She nodded, and they both fell silent, an awkward silence growing between them. Was there a way to say _Let's go take one last shower before you return to that desert_ without sounding condescending? Fortunately, he didn't have to figure that out, because Rey suggested it with a smile that said that she'd known exactly what he was thinking. He knew she didn't like the thought of wasting water while they fooled around, but he wanted to give her anything she wanted before they had to part ways. (Because he was, apparently, a secret, clingy romantic when introduced to the right person.) 

An hour later, they were both clean and packed and still glowing from a post-orgasmic high. Rey was tense; Ben figured it was because she was ready to be back on Jakku, waiting for her parents. "We've got just enough time to say goodbye to everyone," he said, leading her to the garage, where Han and Chewie were most likely working on the Falcon. (Something had gotten broken on their last trip out to the Outer Rim. Ben never ceased to be amazed that their piece-of-shit ship was still in one piece.)

"I still can't believe I met Han kriffing Solo," she murmured. He could almost hear her add _What the kriff has my life become?_

"Yeah, he's a real role model," Ben said, unable to keep the bitterness out of his tone. She gave him an apologetic look that he didn't respond to. "Come on."

"Heading out already?" Han said when they entered the garage. He was perched on top of the Falcon, Chewie handing him tools to help fix whatever it was on the hull that needed fixing.

"You know how it is," Ben said, trying to sound much more flippant than he actually felt about the situation. "Places to be, things to do."

"That I do," Han said as he slowly crawled down off of the hull. "Well, it was good of you to come home for the Feast of Flowers. You know how much that means to your mother."

Ben shrugged. "It was about time I made it home for the holidays."

**_And to introduce us to your girlfriend_** , Chewie added.

Han grinned. "And to introduce us to Rey, yes."

Ben caught Rey shifting around a bit awkwardly out of the corner of his eye. "I'm glad she could meet you guys," he said. The words weren't a lie. He hated living in the shadow of the rest of his family, but seeing Rey's expression when she met "Han Solo the smuggler" (a title that still made Ben laugh) and the rest of the Solo-Organa-Skywalker family made something inside of him feel warm. He was glad that he could give that to her, even if they were most likely going to part ways forever after this. _No, don't think like that,_ he reminded himself. 

"I'm glad I could meet you guys, too," Rey said, squeezing Ben's hand. He squeezed back, a _Thank you for being here_ gesture.

"I'm glad you came home for the holiday," Han said as he pulled Ben in for a hug. It was a little awkward, probably because neither of them was particularly good at expressing affection for each other, but the fact that Han was at least making the effort, well...

It didn't make up for all of the time he'd spent running around the galaxy when Ben was a kid, leaving him at home alone. But it was something, and Ben didn't hate him for it. Which felt like progress.

**_You two should visit more often_** , Chewie said as he gave Ben a warm, furry hug. **_Family is important, even for those of us who aren't related by blood_**.

"Look at you, getting sappy," Han teased.

**_It's not every day that Ben brings home a girlfriend_**.

"Please stop making a big deal out of this," Ben muttered to Chewie. The more emphasis they put on the 'girlfriend' thing, the more uncomfortable both Rey and Ben grew, knowing that their time was up. 

"We're just trying to tease you two," Han said. He held out a hand to Rey. "Glad you could make it," he said to her. "I hope to see you again. The rest of the family does, too. You're one of us now, you know?"

Ben heard Rey's sharp inhale. "I—thank you," she said stiffly. "I'm glad I could make it, too."

Luke wasn't home when Ben and Rey were loading the last of their things onto his ship. (Ben had gone out and bought over 50 kilograms' worth of portions on the first day, when Rey was busy checking out the Falcon with Han and Chewie. He'd had to guess Rey's weight, but he _had_ promised to pay her her body weight in portions, so.) "I don't think you're missing much from Luke," Ben said. "He's prone to just fucking off and doing whatever it is that Jedi do when they're not playing with fancy weapons or making things move." She elbowed him, still a little embarrassed by her comment from the day before.

Leia, however, was still at home, taking care of something in her office. The thought that she might have been waiting for them so that she could say goodbye struck Ben as thoughtful. Like Han, she was making an effort. And Ben didn't hate it that she was trying, as well. 

When Ben walked back into the house to go find Rey, she was mid-conversation with his mother. He caught the phrase "You're always welcome here, Rey," and the same sense of happiness and embarrassment Rey had radiated earlier. He wondered what else Leia had been saying, because Rey was now holding back tears. Which was alarming, but she didn’t seem upset or angry. Just sentimental. Ben would have to ask her about it later on.

"It's time to go," he said, a little hesitant to break up whatever moment Leia and Rey were having. (Okay, _fine_ ; he was very hesitant because leaving would mean...well, _leaving_.)

"Right," Leia said, giving Rey one last hug. "It wonderful to meet you, Rey. Remember what I said." _What did she say?_ Ben wondered. Would it be rude to ask Rey about it later on, or was it a personal moment that he had no right to? "And you," she said, turning to hug Ben. "Thank you for coming home for the Feast of Flowers. I know you don't care about your roots, but it means a lot to me," she whispered.

It wasn't that Ben didn't care about his roots, he just hated the reminder that he didn't measure up to the standards of heroes. But whatever; no use in opening that can of worms right now. "I'm glad I could make it," he said, surprised to find that he actually meant it. 

"I would say 'please don't wait another year before you come home again,' but I know you're going to do whatever you want anyway," Leia said.

Ben gave a guilty laugh. "We're a family of workaholics. Did you expect any different?" 

Leia sighed. "I suppose I deserve that," she admitted.

 

* * *

 

The ride back to Jakku was about as awkward as it was possible to get. Both Ben and Rey were locked in a standoff of _I want to make the most of this time while we can_ versus _we should probably start untangling ourselves from each other._ He hated the fact that something so good could sour so quickly.

No, sour wasn't quite the right word. Bittersweet. It was bittersweet.

"What did my mom say to you?" Ben asked after an hour of awkward silent spent sitting in the cockpit, both of them trying to find every excuse to not acknowledge the bantha in the room. 

There was a brief moment before Rey responded. "She told me I was part of the family," she said softly. "That things between you and me had to be pretty serious for you to bring me to meet them." 

Oh. That explained the tears. Hell, Ben was nearly tearing up as the impact of that statement hit him. 

"I've never..." She seemed like she was struggling to find the words. Maybe Basic wasn't capable of expressing all of the complicated things he knew she was feeling right now. "It's strange," she finally said. "Being told I'm part of a family. I mean, I know I am, because mine are coming back, but being welcomed into someone else's..."

There it was again, the fierce devotion to the idea that her parents were returning after fifteen years of abandonment on Jakku. He was sure that deep down, she knew that they weren’t coming back, but it was like she’d buried that so deeply that she’d completely bought into her own lie.

"It was strange," Rey finally added. "I'm feeling things that I can't name."

This felt like the conversation that they needed to have while tangled up in each other in his bed, but he felt frozen. “For what it’s worth,” he blurted. “I would never abandon you.” 

_Oh, shit._ The look on her face—something soft, tender, unbelieving, and sad—was heartbreaking. “You can’t stay on Jakku,” she said. “You’d hate it. And then you’d eventually resent me for staying there.”

As much as he hated to admit it, she wasn’t completely wrong. He couldn’t stay on Jakku. (There was still the matter of the hit he needed to take out on Unkar Plutt; he had no idea how Rey would respond to that bit of information, but it probably wasn’t going to be good.) He wasn’t comfortable staying in one place for too long, and he’d never be able to truly assimilate to life in the barren wasteland that Rey had spent nearly her whole life in.

They needed a compromise. “Wait here,” he said, standing up. “I have an idea.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [As per Wookieepedia, Rey weighs 54 kilograms](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Rey)...so Ben bought 54 kg of portions for her. He keeps his promises.


	10. I have a good feeling about this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben has an idea. Rey makes a decision.

Rey glanced at the chrono on the ship's dashboard. _Wait here,_ Ben had said. That had been half an hour ago. Half an hour of agonizing and panicking and wondering how the hell he could possibly have a solution for this. She was about to push herself out of the seat to go find him when he reappeared, thrusting a small device that she didn't recognize in her face. "What is it?" she asked, taking it from him. It wasn't anything that came standard on Rebellion or Empire warships, that was for sure.

"A cloaked binary beacon," he said, holding up an identical device. "They're tuned into each other. I've had this set in storage for ages. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, aside from using it as a way to track down my ship in case it got stolen. But I think this is a much better use for it." 

_Tracking down...?_ "So you're saying that you have one device and I have the other, and they'll help us find each other again?" She probably shouldn't have been so surprised that this tech existed, but she'd never given any thought as to whether or not her parents had left something like this when they'd left her with Plutt. 

"From anywhere in the galaxy. I'm not asking you to abandon your life on Jakku for me," he said quickly, "but if you—if your parents come back and you decide that you need a fake boyfriend to introduce them to, find me. I'll come back for you." She got the sense that he'd been about to say something else, and then there was his choice of wording. If. _If_ your parents come back. Not _when_. Did he think that they weren't coming back?

She didn't realize that she hadn't responded until she felt his anxiety prickle in the Force, a hurt look appearing on his face. "Unless you...unless I misinterpreted," he said quietly. 

"No, not at all!" She gripped the beacon with both hands, like she was afraid that someone was going to steal it. _Old habits die hard,_ she thought. She'd have to be careful to keep this out of sight of the other scavengers on Jakku. They might not recognize what it was, but they'd probably recognize that it had some sort of trade-in value. "Are you sure about this? I don't want you to wait around for me." She'd never make someone she cared about wait for her to return. After spending her entire life on the other side of that, she couldn't do that to anyone else.

"Rey," he said, kneeling down in front of her, "you're absolutely worth waiting for." Before she could figure out some way to express the warmth and fluttering that gave her, he added, "Besides, I have a good feeling about this."

She felt her expression melt into a smile. "I do, too."

 

* * *

 

"Why were you on Jakku in the first place?" She'd asked purely out of curiosity—if he'd only been looking for a fake girlfriend, there were far better places to look—but the way Ben tensed beside her made her nervous.

"Uh," he said, pulling away to push himself up against the headboard of the small bunk on his ship, where they'd spent most of the trip from Hosnian Prime. They were nearing Jakku now. The binary beacon was reassuring, but there was so much doubt gnawing at her. Not just about Ben, but about her parents, as well. What if they'd come looking for her while she was gone, and then they'd left again, thinking that she had forgotten about them? She didn't know which was worse, the idea that her parents had returned to Jakku only to find her gone, or the idea that they hadn't come looking at all.

...and now she had a new doubt in the form of Ben's obvious reluctance to discuss his reasons for being at Niima Outpost five days ago.

"So I never told you what my job is," he said, running a hand through his hair.

"I figured it was something along the lines of smuggling," she said. She wasn't sure why he'd feel the need to hide that from his parents, but she'd figured that it wasn't her business.

"Something like that..." He grimaced. "Rey, I'm a bounty hunter."

_Oh._ "That's it?" she said. Bounty hunters weren't as common as smugglers in Niima Outpost, but that explained why he was always on the move. "Why all the secrecy, then?"

"I was on Jakku for a job."

She narrowed her eyes. "What kind of job?"

"Someone hired me to take someone out," he said, unable to meet her eyes.

"Who." She was almost certain she knew, because who else would anyone bother to order a hit on, other than—

"Unkar Plutt."

She took a deep breath in. Exhaled slowly. "You can't do that," she said.

Ben's eyes finally flickered over to meet hers. "Why not?" he said. "How can that _not_ be a good thing for you? He treats you and the rest of the Jakku scavengers like slaves, making you work for barely enough food to get by." She had a brief moment of wondering how the hell he could know that before she realized that it was probably obvious to any off-worlder who hung around Niima Outpost for more than five minutes.

"It's wrong," she said. "It's going to destroy the Jakku economy."

He blinked slowly. "It's going to destroy the kriffing _economy_? Not 'don't kill him because killing is wrong'?"

"You can't just take out the asshole in charge! Niima Outpost is simple compared to most of the galaxy—" as she now knew "—but it's going to cause a breakdown if you take Plutt out without leaving someone in his place.” She paused. “And yes, a little bit because killing is wrong." 

(Although if she was being honest, she didn't completely hate the idea of Unkar Plutt dying alone in the sands of Jakku.)

“Killing the Crolute responsible for making your life a living hell is going to ruin the economy, but me leaving you with your literal body weight in portions will be fine?”

_Okay, he has a point._ Rey only had the vaguest understanding of how an economy worked, but she knew that showing up with enough portions to keep her full for the next decade also might be a problem.

In her defense, when she’d asked for her weight in portions, she hadn’t thought he would take it so literally.

“What if…” He looked at her like he was trying to gauge something. “What if we put you in charge? I can’t change my mind on this job. I’ve built a reputation around keeping my promises.” He took a breath. “But you’re right, killing Plutt would impact other people.” 

Rey burst out laughing, trying to picture herself in the Crolute’s place. “Are you serious?” she asked. “Me, in charge?”

“Why not? You’d be a lot more fair than Plutt. You know what it’s like to be on the other end of that. That way I can finish the job and you get a better way of life. Win-win.”

She’d never even considered taking over Plutt’s job before, but now that Ben mentioned it… “Sure,” she said. “I’ll try anything once.”

He grinned. “Anything?”

 

* * *

  

In the end, Ben didn't kill Plutt. 

He did, however, teach Rey how to do something he called the "Jedi mind trick," using Plutt as a demonstration.

"You will get on a ship and fly into the Unknown Regions and never return," Ben intoned in a deep, firm voice that held a hint of _something else_ that made Rey shiver. 

"I will get on a ship and fly into the Unknown Regions and never return," Plutt repeated tonelessly, a dull look in his eyes. 

"I don't get how you can ensure he's actually going to do what you say," Rey said as Plutt continued to stare ahead, looking slightly dazed.

"No one has ever changed their mind when I've done that before," Ben said. "Or when anyone else has, for that matter." 

"Did Jedi really do that to people? Isn't controlling someone else kind of, I don't know, evil?"

Ben shrugged. "The Jedi had a lot of issues," he said. "They did a lot of evil things in the name of 'peace' and 'light.'" 

"Does this work on everyone?" Rey shivered as the implications of anyone with any training in the Force having access to that kind of power hit her. 

"No! No, definitely not. Just on the weak-minded."

Rey wasn't sure if Plutt could be considered 'weak-minded,' but if it meant that Ben could claim the job was done without actually having to spill blood, she'd take it. "Niima Outpost isn't going to be the same without him."

"You sound so upset about that," he deadpanned.

"Rot in hell, you slimy son of a Murglak," she said, smiling sweetly at Plutt’s vacant expression. 

“No, no,” Ben corrected. “You need to put more emphasis on it if you want to do the Jedi mind trick on him. Try it again.”

 

* * *

 

With Plutt out of the way, there wasn't much left for Ben to do on Jakku. As much as she hated the idea of someone she'd started to grow attached to walking out of her life, Rey wasn't going to let him stay on Jakku any longer than he had to. It wasn't like there were a lot of sightseeing opportunities, unless you wanted to see a sandstorm or half a Star Destroyer. "So," he said as they hovered outside of Rey's AT-AT.

"So," she said, equally at a loss for words. What was there left to say? They had the beacon. They both knew what their next steps were.

"Well," he said, holding up a hand awkwardly, like he was planning on just waving goodbye to her after everything. "Thanks for everything, I guess."

She felt like something was stuck in her throat. "Yeah," she said hollowly. "You, too." She turned away, refusing to watch another ship fly off without her on it, and she heard Ben sigh before he turned and started to walk back up the ramp onto his ship. _Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry,_ she chanted. _Water is a scarce resource here, remember?_

She heard Ben grumble something under his breath before he stopped walking, and before she could figure out what was happening, he was stomping back down the ramp to spin her around and kiss her one last time. "There," he whispered as they both came up for air. "That was better than whatever the hell that goodbye almost was."

And sure, maybe the goodbye kiss broke her heart a little (okay, maybe a lot), but it was just the thing that their weird, surprising, accidental relationship deserved.

 

* * *

 

A month went by. 

Rey waited.

No one came looking for her.

Taking up Plutt's job was keeping her busy, but it wasn't what she really wanted to be doing. She found that she missed crawling around old Star Destroyers all day, even though it was incredibly dangerous work that rarely brought in enough portions to keep her going. Keeping things running at Niima Outpost was pretty boring, and Rey didn't feel invested enough in it to care about doing a good job of it.

Another month went by.

Nothing changed, except that the scavengers on Jakku were looking a little less malnourished, and Rey found herself starting fights with Plutt's thugs out of sheer boredom. She didn't miss the near-starvation she'd been living with before...well, before Ben, but she did miss the physical activity and the reasoning required to do good work as a scavenger. 

She spent a lot of time thinking about the Force. Now that Rey was aware of it, she couldn't stop wondering about it. It kept her up late at night, lying alone in her AT-AT (she refused to give that up; the idea of moving into Plutt's old living quarters grossed her out). Most nights, it was either "lay awake and think about the Force" or "lay awake and think about a certain Force-sensitive bounty hunter," the former of which was much easier than the latter. She wore the binary beacon on her wrist, covered up by her arm wraps so that no one else could see it, and she often woke up with her hand wrapped around it, pressing it close to her chest.

And then there were the dreams. Rey's dreams had always been full of places she'd never see, things she'd never find on Jakku, like islands and seas and greens and blues. She still had those dreams, but they were now entwined with dreams of Ben, and every time she woke, she wondered if he'd been dreaming of her, too.

She shook herself. _No use obsessing about things that aren't happening,_ she reminded herself. _Remember why you chose to come back._  

But another month went by and it was getting harder and harder to remember why she had chosen Jakku. Rey was sick of waiting. She'd waited for at least fifteen years. She'd left Jakku and come back and her parents still hadn't returned for her. And if they hadn't returned by now—if they hadn't come back while she was gone—then were they ever actually coming back for her?

If _your parents return._ Not _when_.

She'd told Ben not to wait for her, but he'd seemed like he wanted to do that anyway, and was it fair of her to make him wait around for her when she knew exactly how it felt to wait around for someone who wasn't coming back for you? Not to mention, she was getting more and more fed up with Jakku and Niima Outpost every second she spent there, and was this _really_ what she wanted to be doing with her life?

The tipping point was one day about five standard months after she and Ben had parted ways. A fight broke out between one of Plutt's thugs, an offworlder, and three scavengers. As the person currently in charge of Niima Outpost, she knew that she should step in before someone did serious damage to someone or something else, but... "That's it," Rey said, storming out into the crowd. "I have had it with all of you. I am completely out of fucks to give about this place. I am going to get on that ship—" She pointed off in the direction of a ship that she knew wasn't total garbage "—and I am going to fly out of here and never return, and no one is going to stop me. Is that clear?" She was pretty sure that it was impossible to Jedi mind trick a whole crowd of people, but she couldn't think of a better reason why everyone just watched her leave with silent, slack-jawed expressions.

Even if her parents _did_ want to come back for her, she figured, did she really want to go live with the people who had left her in the desert in the first place?

_A better question is,_ she thought as she prepared to leave Jakku for the last time, _how the hell does this cloaked binary beacon work?_ Ben hadn't left instructions for it, leaving Rey to wonder if he knew how they worked. 

A quick HoloNet search later, she entered some coordinates into the ship's nav system and before she knew it, she was watching Jakku shrink into a tiny brown dot and then disappear completely. "Stars, I hope I'm doing this right," she muttered as she made the jump into hyperspace. She really, _really_ didn’t want to spend to spend the next standard year wandering around the galaxy, trying to find him.

She was done waiting.

 

* * *

 

Two weeks later found Rey entering the atmo of another tan, sandy rock of a planet called Tatooine. “Of all places for Ben to be,” she muttered to herself as she landed just outside of Mos Espa. She wondered if she’d be able to find him if she reached out in the Force, now that they were on the same planet. Now that she was nearing him—or, at least, nearing the location of the partner to her cloaked binary beacon—she was second-guessing herself. What if he’d changed his mind, and he didn’t actually want her around?

_I’ll figure something out,_ she told herself as she wandered through the dusty spaceport, on the lookout for a tall human male who may or may not be wearing a helmet. He’d told her that he usually went by the name Kylo Ren while working (“Nobody’s going to hire a bounty hunter related to Senator Leia Organa,” he’d told her as she struggled to hold back her laughter at his choice of pseudonym), so she started asking around for someone by that name.

It turned out that she didn’t need to ask as she got closer, though. She didn’t even realize that she’d been following the trail of his Force signature through the spaceport until she was standing outside of a dusty tavern with a sign in front reading _The Seedy Prayer Bar_ in Aurebesh, marveling at how lively this place seemed compared to Niima Outpost.

Despite the midday hour, the tavern was full of customers of various species. Rey had a brief moment of panic before things _snapped_ , and the rest of the noise faded away until she and Ben were locking eyes from across the bar.

(Well, okay, maybe to _him_ they were locking eyes, but she couldn’t see where exactly his eyes were pointing, thanks to that stupid mask. She knew it was him, though. How else could she explain the sudden sense of relief she felt, both from herself and from his Force signature?)

“Of all the places to lead me to, you chose another desert?” she said, sliding into the empty seat next to him.

“I didn’t expect you to come after me so quickly.” She didn’t like the way the mask distorted his voice. _How the hell does he expect to drink anything with a mask on?_ she wondered, glancing at the untouched beer sitting in front of him. “I was on my way to Naboo when I realized you were approaching, and I decided to wait for you.”

“You waited for me?” she echoed. 

She was pretty sure he was smiling underneath the mask when he said, “Of course I did. I told you, you’re worth waiting for.”

“So what happens now?”

“That depends.”

“On?” 

“If you decide you want to come with me or not.”

“Ben. Obviously I want to come with you. I’m here, aren’t I?” He gave her a minute head shake to remind her that he didn’t go by that name here, and she rolled her eyes. “Can we go someplace else to talk about this?” she asked.

Ten minutes later, they were walking up the ramp onto his ship in silence. Rey was all but vibrating with nerves and energy at finally seeing Ben again, and he barely waited to get out of the hot, dry, Tatooine suns before he was ripping his mask off and kissing her and _oh,_ yes, this is what she wanted, now and forever. “Hi,” she breathed as they came up for air. 

“I didn’t think you’d come looking for me so soon,” he whispered. ‘If you came looking at all.”

“I didn’t want to waste any more time waiting around for someone who might never return,” she said. “And I didn’t want to make you wait, either.”

He looked like he didn’t quite have the words to say the things he wanted to convey, but that was okay; she was sure she was wearing a similar expression. “Rey, you need to know. I’m not planning on leaving my line of work. I’m good at it, and I’m not sure I’m good at much else. But I…” He looked like he was trying to gauge her reaction. “I’m no longer taking jobs that involve killing,” he said. “Just the jobs that involve bringing in criminals. Alive.” 

_Oh, I can think of_ plenty _of other things you’re good at,_ she wanted to say, but now was not the time. “Oh,” she said instead. “Good.” And then, because she had no idea what else to say to that, she said, “Do you need a mechanic? I’m good with my hands.”

He grinned. “Are you? I might need a demonstration,” he said, twining his fingers with hers.

“What, now? Can’t we sell my ship and get off this rock first?” she asked, pulling him in for another kiss.

“What’s the rush?” he asked. “We have forever.”

_Forever._ She liked the sound of that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's a [Murglak](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Murglak)? (Yes, I did go through [a list of slang terms on Wookieepedia](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_phrases_and_slang/Legends) to find this particular insult.)
> 
> In case you haven't seen TPM in a while, [Mos Espa](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mos_Espa) is the place Anakin and Shmi are from.
> 
> The Seedy Prayer Bar doesn’t exist; I used a [Seventh Sanctum generator](https://www.seventhsanctum.com/) for it ‘cause I’m not creative enough to think of random tavern names on my own.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading! If you want more "mixing canonverse and AUs" from me, I once wrote a fic about canonverse Rey and Kylo bouncing from AU to AU called [Down the AU Rabbit Hole](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13982946/chapters/32194368).
> 
> If you want more "modern AU tropes in canonverse," I recommend [Like This by dietplanlite](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15904638/chapters/37070196) and [What Happens in Canto Bight by SpaceWaffleHouseTM](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17377463/chapters/40895687). ("Like This" is partially what gave me the idea to stick this trope in a canon-divergence AU.)
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](https://radioactivesaltghoul.tumblr.com/).


End file.
